LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



©^ji* ©cpiinjl^t Ij* 

Shelf ..i-.S'.J 1 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



By Dr. Abbott 

RECENT RAMBLES; Or, 
In Touch with Nature. 
Crown 8vo. Gilt top. Illus- 
trated. J2.00 



TRAVELS IN 

A rREE-rop 




RAVELS IN 
tATREE-TOP 
ByCHARLES 
ONRAD 
J^BBOTT 



PHILADELPHIA & LON- 
DON: J.B.LIPPINCOTT 
COMPANY: MDCCCXCIV 






i 



'^«*^«^181834 



^^ 



OF WA8V*\^ 



^ wash;::, i 






Copyright, 1894, 

BY 

J. B. LiPFiNCOTT Company. 



Printed by J. B. LippmcoTT Company, Philadelphia! 



Contents 

Page 

Travels in a Tree-top 9 

A Hunt for the Pyxie 6i 

The Coming of the Birds 71 

The Building of the Nest 83 

Corn-stalk Fiddles 97 

The Old Kitchen Door 103 

Up the Creek 109 

A Winter-Night^ s Outing 119 

Wild Life in Water 125 

An Old-fashioned Garden 133 

An Indian Trail 147 

A Pre-Columbian Dinner 155 

A Dafs Digging 167 

Drifting 173 

Footprints 187 

Bees and Buckwheat 195 

Dead Leaves 203 



7 




CHAPTER FIRST 

TRAVELS IN A TREE-rOP 




PEARLY mist shut out the river, 
the meadows, and every field for 
miles. I could not deteft the ripple 
of the outgoing tide, and the heartiest songster 
sent no cheerful cry above the wide-spreading 
and low-lying cloud ; but above all this silent, 
desolate, and seemingly deserted outlook there 
was a wealth of sunshine and a canopy of 
deep-blue sky. Here and there, as islands in 
a boundless sea, were the leafy tops of a kvr 
tall trees, and these, I fancied, were tempting 
regions to explore. Travels in a tree-top — 
surely, here we have a bit of novelty in this 
v/orn-out world. 

Unless wholly wedded to the town, it is not 
cheering to think of the surrounding country 
as worn out. It is but little more than two 
centuries since the home-seeking folk of other 
lands came here to trick or trade with the 

9 



lo Travels in a Tree-top 

Indians, wild as the untamed world wherein 
they dwelt ; and now we look almost in vain 
for country as Nature fashioned it. Man may 
make of a desert a pleasant place, but he also 
unmakes the forest and bares the wooded hills 
until as naked and desolate as the fire-swept 
ruins of his own construftion. It is but a 
matter of a few thousand cart-loads of the hill 
moved to one side, and the swamp that the 
farmer dreads because it yields no dollars is ob- 
literated. He has never considered its wealth 
of suggestiveness. " A fig for the flowers and 
vermin. I must plant more corn." 

But here and there the tall trees are still 
standing, and their tops are an untravelled 
country. I climbed an oak this cool mid- 
summer morning ; clambered beyond the 
mists, which were rolling away as I seated 
myself far above the ground, safe from intru- 
sion, and resting trustfully on yielding branches 
that moved so gently in the passing breeze that 
I scarcely perceived their motion. 

How much depends upon our point of view ! 
The woodland path may not be charming if 
the undergrowth too closely shuts us in. In 
all we do, we seek a wider vision than our 
arm's length. There may be nothing better 



Travels in a Tree-top ii 

beyond than at our feet, but we never believe 
it. It is as natural to ask of the distant as 
of the future. They are closely akin. Here 
in the tree-top my wants were supplied. I 
was only in the least important sense cribbed, 
cabined, and confined. 

Wild life, as we call it, is very discrimi- 
nating, and that part of it which notices him 
at all looks upon man as a land animal ; one 
that gropes about the ground, and awkwardly 
at that, often stumbling and ever making more 
noise than his progress calls for ; but when 
perched in a tree, as an arboreal creature, he 
is to be studied anew. So, at least, thought 
the crows that very soon discovered my lofty 
quarters. How they chattered and scolded ! 
They dashed near, as if with their ebon wings 
to cast a spell upon me, and, craning their glossy 
necks, spoke words of warning. My indif- 
ference was exasperating at first, and then, as 
I did not move, they concluded I was asleep, 
dead, or a dummy, like those in the corn- 
fields. The loud expostulations gave place 
to subdued chatterings, and they were about 
to leave without further investigation, when, 
by the pressure of my foot, I snapped a dead 
twig. I will not attempt description. Per- 



12 Travels in a Tree- top 

haps to this day the circumstance is discussed 
in corvine circles. 

It is difficult to realize the freedom of flight. 
Twisting and turning with perfeft ease, adapt- 
ing their bodies to every change of the fitful 
wind, these crows did not use their wings 
with that incessant motion that we need in 
using our limbs to walk, but floated, rose and 
fell, as if shadows rather than ponderable 
bodies. Until we can fly, or, rather, ride 
in flying-machines, we cannot hope to know 
much of this flight-life of birds, and it is the 
better part of their lives. But it was some- 
thing to-day to be with even these crows in 
the air. Following their erratic flight from 
such a point of view, I seemed to be flying. 
We are given at times to wonder a great deal 
about birds, and they have equal reason to 
constantly consider us. Who can say what 
these crows thought of me ? All I can offer 
to him who would solve the problem is that 
their curiosity was unbounded, and this is 
much if their curiosity and ours are akin. Of 
course they talked. Garner need not have 
gone to Africa to prove that monkeys talk, 
and no one can question that crows utter more 
than mere alarm-cries. 



Travels in a Tree-top 13 

A word more concerning crows. What so 
absurd, apparently, as this ? 

" A single crow betokens sorrow, 
Two betoken mirth, 
Three predidl a funeral, 
And four a birth." 

Yet it is a very common saying, being re- 
peated whenever a few, or less than five, fly 
over. It is repeated mechanically, of course, 
and then forgotten, for no one seems to worry 
over one or three crows as they do when a 
looking-glass breaks or the dropped fork sticks 
up in the floor. Seems to worry, and yet I 
strongly suspeft a trace of superstition lingers 
in the mind of many a woman. These who 
will not sit as one of thirteen at a table are 
not dead yet. Can it be that all this weak- 
ness is only more concealed than formerly, 
but none the less existent ? 

I watched the departing crows until they 
were but mere specks in the sky, and heard, 
or fancied I heard, their cawing when half a 
mile away. It is ever a sweet sound to me. 
It means so much, recalls a long round of jolly 
years ; and what matters the quality of a sound 
if a merry heart prompts its utterance ? 



14 Travels in a Tree-top 

I was not the only occupant of the tree ; 
there were hundreds of other and more aftive 
travellers, who often stopped to think or con- 
verse with their fellows and then hurried on. 
I refer to the great, shining, black ants that 
have such a variety of meaningless nicknames. 
Its English cousin is asserted to be ill-tem- 
pered, if not venomous, and both Chaucer 
and Shakespeare refer to them as often mad 
and always treacherous. I saw nothing of 
this to-day. They were ever on the go and 
always in a hurry. They seemed not to dis- 
sociate me from the tree ; perhaps thought 
me an odd excrescence and of no importance. 
No one thinks of himself as such, and I forced 
myself upon the attention of some of the hur- 
rying throng. It was easy to intercept them, 
and they grew quickly frantic ; but their fel- 
lows paid no attention to such as I held cap- 
tive for the moment. I had a small paper 
box with me, and this I stuck full of pin-holes 
on every side and then put half a dozen of 
the ants in it. Holding it in the line of the 
insefts' march, it immediately became a source 
of wonderment, and every ant that came by 
stopped and parleyed with the prisoners. A 
few returned earthward, and then a number 



Travels in a Tree-top 15 

came together, but beyond this I could see 
nothing in the way of concerted aftion on the 
part of the ants at large looking towards suc- 
coring their captive fellows. Releasing them, 
these detained ants at once scattered in all di- 
reftions, and the incident was quickly forgot- 
ten. Where were these ants going, and what 
was their purpose ? I wondered. I was as 
near the tree's top as I dared to go, but the 
ants went on, apparently to the very tips of 
the tiniest twigs, and not one that I saw came 
down laden or passed up with any burden. 
It is not to be supposed they had no purpose 
in so doing, but what ? There is scarcely an 
hour when we are not called upon to witness 
just such aimless aftivity, — that is, aimless so 
far as we can determine. 

Nothing molested these huge black ants, 
although inseft-eating birds came and went 
continually. One lordly, great-crested fly- 
catcher eyed them meditatively for some sec- 
onds, and then my identity suddenly dawned 
upon him. His harsh voice, affefted by fear, 
was more out of tune than ever, and, coupled 
with his precipitant flight, was very amusing. 
The bird fell off the tree, but quickly caught 
himself, and then, as usual, curiosity overcame 



1 6 Travels in a Tree-top 

fear. Students of bird-ways should never for- 
get this. The fly-catcher soon took a stand 
wherefrom to observe me, and, if intently 
staring at me for thirty seconds was not curi- 
osity, what shall we call it ? Is it fair to 
explain away everything by calling it mere 
coincidence ? It is a common practice, and 
about as logical as the old cry of " instindl" 
when I went to school. To have said, when 
I was a boy, that a bird could think and could 
communicate ideas to another of its kind, 
would have brought down ridicule upon my 
head out of school, and brought down some- 
thing more weighty if the idea had been ex- 
pressed in a " composition." I speak from 
experience. 

To return to the cheerier subject of curi- 
osity in birds : our large hawks have it to a 
marked degree, and advantage can be taken of 
this faft if you wish to trap them. I have 
found this particularly true in winter, when 
there is a general covering of the ground with 
snow. Food, of course, is not then quite so 
plenty, but this does not explain the matter. 
An empty steel trap on the top of a hay-stack 
is quite as likely to be tampered with as when 
baited with a mouse. The hawk will walk 



Travels in a Tree-top 17 

all around it, and then put out one foot and 
touch it here and there. If we can judge from 
the bird's aflions, the question. What is it, 
anyway ? is running through its mind. I once 
played a trick upon a splendid black hawk that 
had been mousing over the fields for half the 
winter. It often perched upon a stack of 
straw instead of the lone hickory near by. 
Early one morning I placed a plump meadow- 
mouse on the very top of the stack, to which 
I had attached a dozen long strands of bright- 
red woollen yarn and a bladder that I had in- 
flated. This was secured to the mouse by a 
silk cord, and all were so concealed by the 
snow and straw that the hawk noticed the 
mouse only. The bird was suspicious at first : 
it was too unusual for a mouse not to move 
when a hawk hovered above it. Then the 
bird alighted on the stack and walked about 
the mouse, pecking at it once, but not touch- 
ing it. Then putting out one foot, he seized 
it with a firm grip, the talons passing through 
the carcass, and at the same time spread his 
wings and moved slowly towards the lone 
hickory that towered near by. I was near 
enough to see every movement. It was evi- 
dent that the hawk did not look down at first, 
b 2* 



1 8 Travels in a Tree-top 

and saw nothing of the streaming threads and 
bobbing bladder; but it did a moment later, 
and then what a quickening of wings and 
hasty mounting upward ! The hawk was 
frightened, and gave a violent jerk with one 
foot, as if to disengage the mouse, but it was 
inefFeftual. The sharp claws had too strong 
a hold, and the efFefl was only to more vio- 
lently bob the bladder. Then the hawk 
screamed and dashed into the trees near by, 
and was out of sight. 

A curious and disappointing occurrence, 
while sitting aloft, was the frequent dis- 
covery of my presence by birds and their 
sudden right-about movement and departure. 
Occasionally I could see them coming as if di- 
reftly towards me, but their keen eyes noticed 
the unusual objedl, and they would dart ofF 
with a promptness that showed how com- 
pletely at home they were while on the wing. 
Even the bluebirds, usually so tame, had 
their misgivings, and came to rest in other 
trees. But if the birds were not always about 
and above me, there were many below, and the 
sweet song of the wood-robin from the tangled 
underbrush seemed clearer and purer than 
when sifted through a wilderness of leaves. 



Travels in a Tree-top 19 

It was not until noon that the wood and 
open fields became silent or nearly so, for the 
red-eye came continually, and, whether insedl- 
hunting in the tree or on the wing, it seemed 
never to cease its singing, or querulous cry, 
which more aptly describes its utterance. To 
hear this sound throughout a long summer day 
is depressing, particularly if you hear nothing 
else, for the steady hum of inseft-life hardly 
passes for sound. It was only when I lis- 
tened for it that I was aware that millions of 
tiny creatures were filling the air with a hum- 
ming that varied only as the light breeze car- 
ried it away or brought it nearer and clearer 
than before. There is a vast difference be- 
tween absolute and comparative or apparent 
silence. The former is scarcely ever a con- 
dition of the open country unless during a 
still, cold winter night, and never of one of 
our ordinary woodland trafts. We do find it, 
however, in the cedar swamps and pine-land, 
even during summer. I have often stood in 
" the pines" of Southern New Jersey and 
tried to detedl some sound other than that 
of my own breathing, but in vain. Not 
a twig stirred. The dark waters of the pools 
were motionless ; even the scattered clouds 



20 Travels in a Tree-top 

above were at rest. It was to be absolutely 
alone, as if the only living creature upon 
earth. But ere long a gentle breeze w^ould 
spring up, there w^as a light and airy trem- 
bling of the pines, and the monotone of a 
w^hispered sigh filled the forest. Even this 
vv^as a relief, and w^hat a joy if some lonely bird 
passed by and even lisped of its presence ! 
The dee-dee of a titmouse at such a time vv^as 
sw^eeter music than the choral service that 
heralds the coming of a bright June morning. 
At noon, the day being torrid, there was 
comparative silence, and yet as I looked about 
me I saw ceaseless aftivity in a small way. 
The ants were still journeying, and red ad- 
miral and yellow swallow-tailed butterflies 
came near, and the latter even passed high 
overhead and mingled with the chimney- 
swifts. Had I been on the ground, walking 
instead of waiting, I should have sought some 
sheltered spot and rested, taking a hint from 
much of the wild life I was watching. 

AT NOONTIDE. 
Where cluster oaks and runs the rapid brook, 

Repose the jutting rocks beneath the ferns ; 
Here seeks the thrush his hidden leafy nook, 

And wandering squirrel to his hole returns. 



Travels in a Tree-top 21 

Afar the steaming river slowly wends 
Its tortuous way to mingle with the sea ; 

No cheerful voice its languid course attends ; 
The blight of silence rests upon the lea. 

Where the wide meadow spreads its wealth of weeds, 
Where the rank harvest waves above the field, 

The testy hornet in his anger speeds, 

And stolid beetle bears his brazen shield. 

Give them the glowing, fiery world they love. 
Give me the cool retreat beside the stream ; 

While sweeps the sun the noontide sky above, 
Here would I linger with the birds and dream. 

And now what of the tree itself? Here 
I have been the better part of a long fore- 
noon, and scarcely given this fine young oak 
a thought. A young oak, yet a good deal 
older than its burden ; an oak that was an 
acorn when the century was new, and now 
a sturdy growth full sixty feet high, straight 
of stem to its undermost branches and shapely 
everywhere. Such trees are not remarkable 
of themselves, though things of beauty, but 
at times how suggestive ! Think of pre- 
Columbian America ; then there were oaks to 
make men marvel. " There were giants in 
those days." Occasionally we meet with 



22 Travels in a Tree-top 

them even now. A year ago I camped on 
the shore of Chesapeake Bay near an oak 
that measured eighteen feet six inches in 
circumference four feet from the ground, and 
in St. Paul's church-yard, not a great way 
off, are five big oaks, one of which is twenty 
feet around shoulder high from the roots. 
Such trees are very old. The church-yard 
was enclosed two centuries ago, and these 
were big trees then, and so older by far than 
any monument of white men on the continent, 
except possible traces of the Norsemen. If 
a tree such as this in which I have been sit- 
ting is full to overflowing with suggestiveness, 
how much more so a noble patriarch like that 
upon the bay shore ! It is usually not easy to 
realize the dimensions of a huge tree by 
merely looking at it, but this mammoth im- 
pressed one at first sight. The branches were 
themselves great trees, and together cast a cir- 
cular patch of shade, at noon, three paces 
more than one hundred feet across. As a 
tree in which to ramble none could have 
been better shaped. The lowest branches 
were less than twenty feet from the ground, 
and after reaching horizontally a long way, 
curved upward and again outward, dividing 



Travels in a Tree-top 23 

finally into the leaf-bearing twigs. Course 
after course continued in this way, the size 
decreasing gradually, and the whole forming, 
as seen from a distance, a magnificent dome- 
shaped mass. Comparisons with the tree's 
surroundings were full of suggestiveness. 
The ground immediately about was densely 
covered with rank ferns and the acorn sprouts 
of one or two years' growth. Yet, where they 
were, it seemed but a smoothly-shaven lawn, 
so insignificant were they when seen with the 
tree ; and the sproutland beyond, which 
would otherwise have been a wood, was ab- 
solutely insignificant. Yet, in truth, every- 
thing here was on a grand scale. The ferns 
were tall, and to prove it I sat upon the 
ground among them and so shut out all view 
of the great tree and its surroundings. I 
spent many hours seated upon different 
branches of this oak, and every one had feat- 
ures all its own. From those nearest the 
ground I surveyed the bird-life in the thicket 
beneath, and was entertained by a pair of 
nesting cardinal red-birds that came and went 
as freely as if quite alone, and whistled cheer- 
fully morning, noon, and night. I fancied I 
made friends with these birds, for early one 



24 Travels in a Tree- top 

morning the male bird came to camp, as if 
to inspedl my nest, thinking I was not up, 
and he expressed his favorable opinion in 
most glowing terms. A pair of doves, too, 
had a nest in sight, and their melancholy coo- 
ing seemed out of tune here, where Nature 
had done her work so well. Once, at least, 
while I was there, the bald eagle came for a 
few moments, and, big bird as he is, was not 
conspicuous, and had not a flash of sunlight 
fallen upon his yellow beak and white head, 
I should not have been aware of his presence, 
as he certainly was not of mine. What I 
took to be a duck-hawk, a few days later, in- 
terested me much more. He was a splendid 
bird, and tarried but a short time. The 
leaves so concealed him that I was not sure, 
having no field-glass at the time, but do not 
think I was mistaken. The eagle did not 
appear to disturb the fish-hawk's temper in 
the least, but the great hawk did, and he 
was much excited until the bird disappeared 
in the steam and smoke that as a great cloud 
rested above Baltimore. 

The birds of this retired spot may be 
divided into two classes, — those of the oak 
and of the sproutland growths about it, and 



Travels in a Tree-top 25 

the birds of the air, principally swallows, 
which hung over the tree as a trembling 
cloud. Never were swallows more numer- 
ous, except when flocked prior to migration. 
In the tree and bushes were always many 
birds, yet often they were far from each 
other. This gave me an excellent idea of 
what a great oak really is. Birds quite out of 
sight and hearing of each other were resting 
on branches from the same trunk. Although 
the middle of July, there was no lack of 
song, and second nesting of many familiar 
birds is, I judge, more common in Maryland 
than in New Jersey. Of all the birds that 
came, the little green herons were the most 
amusing. A pair doubtless had a nest near 
by, or young that were not yet on the 
wing. They walked sedately along the level 
branches, as a man might pace up and down 
his study, buried in deep thought. I listened 
carefully for some expression of content, but 
they made no sound except when they were 
startled and flew off. I was much surprised 
to find the beach-birds occasionally darting 
among the branches, and once a spotted sand- 
piper rested a moment near me. These birds 
we associate with water and the open country, 
B 3 



26 Travels in a Tree-top 

although this species is less aquatic than its 
fellows. They were always in sight from 
the door of my tent, and always an earlier 
bird than I. I recall now standing upon the 
beach long before sunrise, marking the prom- 
ises of the coming day, as I interpreted them. 
The fish-hawks were ahead of me ; so, too, 
the little sand-pipers. Their piping at this 
time was very clear and musical. It was a 
delightful accompaniment to the rippling 
water. The dear old song-sparrows were 
quiet, and I was very glad ; but with the 
first flooding of the sea with sunlight they 
all sang out, and the Chesapeake was afar 
olTand I in the home meadows on the Dela- 
ware. I prefer novelty when away. It is 
well to utterly forget, at times, that which 
we most prize. What boots it to stand on 
the hill-top, if your thoughts are forever in 
the lowlands ? Twice, from the branches 
of the old oak, I saw a splendid sunset, but 
nothing equal to the sunrise of to-day. With 
many a matter of this life the beginning is 
better than the end. We had a superb sun- 
set last night. The color was gorgeous, but 
it was plain and commonplace compared to 
the sunrise of to-day. Perhaps no tint was 



Travels in a Tree-top 27 

really brighter in one case than in the other, 
but my mind was. The sunset was too 
closely linked with the death of the day ; there 
was the idea of a grand finale before the 
curtain drops, and this tends to dull enthu- 
siasm. It is not so with sunrise. It is all 
freshness, — a matter of birth, of beginning, 
of a new trial of life, — and with so happy an 
entrance, the exit should be one of gladness 
only ; but there is no trace of pity in Nature. 
In awful certainty the night cometh. 

I was not surprised at every visit to this 
tree to find some new form of life resting on 
its branches. A beautiful garter-snake had 
reached a low branch by climbing to it from 
a sapling that reached a little above it. There 
was no break in the highway that led to 
its very summit. The grass leaned upon 
ferns, these upon shrubs, these again upon 
saplings, and so the tree was reached. Any 
creeping thing could have climbed just eighty 
feet above the earth with far less danger than 
men encounter clambering over hills. 

And not only a zoological garden was this 
and is every other old tree, but the oak had 
its botanic garden as well. When we con- 
sider that many of the branches were so wide 



28 Travels in a Tree-top 

and level that one could walk upon them, it is 
not strange that earth, dead leaves, and w^ater 
should lodge in many places. Indeed, besides 
the two gardens I have mentioned, the oak 
had also an aquarium. But I cannot go 
into particulars. The parasitic plant-life — 
not truly such, like the mistletoe — was a 
striking feature. Maple seeds had lodged and 
sprouted, and in a saucer-shaped depression 
where dust and water had lodged a starved 
hawkweed had got so far towards maturity 
as to be in bud. 



It may appear as utter foolishness to others, 
but I believe that trees might in time become 
tiresome. Whether in leaf or bare of foli- 
age, there is a fixedness that palls at last. 
We are given to looking from the tree to 
the world beyond ; to hurrying from beneath 
their branches to the open country. To live 
in a dense forest is akin to living in a great 
city. There is a sense of confinement against 
which, sooner or later, we are sure to rebel. 
We long for change. The man who is per- 
fectly satisfied has no knowledge of what satis- 
faftion really is. Logical or not, I turned 



Travels in a Tree-top 29 

my attention from the tree at last, and thought. 
What of the outlook ? Direftly north, in 
the shallow basin, hemmed in by low hills, 
lies the town. A cloud of smoke and steam 
rests over it, and barely above it reach the 
church-spires and tall faftory chimneys, as if 
the place was struggling to be free, but only 
had its finger-tips out of the mire of the 
town, of which I know but little. My won- 
der is that so many people stay there, and, 
stranger still, wild life not only crowds its 
outskirts, but ventures into its very midst. 
In one town, not far away, I found the 
nests of seventeen species of birds, but then 
there was a large old cemetery and a mill- 
pond within its boundaries. Time was when 
through the town before me there flowed a 
creek, and a pretty wood flourished along its 
south bank. The creek is now a sewer, and 
an open one at that, and yet the musk-rat 
cannot quite make up his mind to leave it. 
Stranger than this was seeing recently, in a 
small creek discolored by a dyeing establish- 
ment, a little brown diver. How it could 
bring itself to swim in such filth must re- 
main a mystery. A queer old charafter that 
had lived all his life in the country once said 
3* 



30 Travels in a Tree-top 

of the nearest town, " It is a good place 
to dump what we don't want on the farm." 
This old fellow would always drive me 
out of his orchard when apples were ripe, 
but I liked him for the sentiment I have 
quoted. 

I am out of town now, and what of the 
world in another direction ? Turning to the 
east, I have farm after farm before me ; all 
different, yet with a strong family likeness. 
This region was taken up by English Quakers 
about 1670 and a little later, and the houses 
they built were as much alike as are these 
people in their apparel. The second set of 
buildings were larger only and no less severely 
plain ; but immediately preceding the Revo- 
lution there were some very substantial man- 
sions erefted. From my perch in the tree- 
top I cannot see any of the houses distinftly, 
but locate them all by the group of Weymouth 
pines in front and sometimes both before and 
behind them. The old-time Lombardy pop- 
lar was the tree of the door-yards at first, but 
these, in this neighborhood, have well-nigh 
all died out, and the pines replace them. 
One farm-house is vividly piflured before me, 
although quite out of sight. The owner 



Travels in a Tree-top 31 

made it a home for such birds as might choose 
to come, as well as for himself, and what royal 
days have been spent there ! There was 
no one feature to attraft instant attention as 
you approached the house. The trees were 
thrifty, the shrubbery healthy, the roses vig- 
orous, and the flowering plants judiciously se- 
lefted; but what did strike the visitor was 
the wealth of bird-life. For once let me cat- 
alogue what I have seen in and about one 
door-yard and what should be about every 
one in the land. At the end of the house, 
and very near the corner of the long portico, 
stood a martin-box, occupied by the birds for 
which it was intended. In the porch, so that 
you could reach it with your hand, was a 
wren's nest, and what a strange house it had ! 
It was a huge plaster cast of a lion's head, and 
between the grim teeth the bird passed and re- 
passed continually. It promenaded at times 
on the lion's tongue, and sang triumphantly 
while perched upon an eyebrow. That wren 
certainly saw nothing animal-like in the plas- 
ter cast as it was, and I have wondered if it 
would have been equally free with a stuffed 
head of the animal. My many experiments 
with animals, as to their recognition of ani- 



32 Travels in a Tree-top 

mals as piftured, have demonstrated every- 
thing, and so, I am afraid I must admit, noth- 
ing. In the woodbine on the portico were 
two nests, — a robin's and a chipping-spar- 
row's. These were close to each other, and 
once, when sitting in a rocking-chair, I swayed 
the woodbine to and fro without disturbing 
either bird. In the garden were a mocking- 
bird, cat-bird, thistle-finch, song-sparrow, 
brown thrush, yellow-breasted chat, and red- 
eyed vireo. In the trees I saw a great-crested 
fly-catcher, purple grakle, a redstart, spotted 
warbler, and another I failed to identify. In 
the field beyond the garden were red-winged 
blackbirds and quail, and beyond, crows, fish- 
hawks, and turkey-buzzards were in the air ; 
and, as the day closed and the pleasant sights 
were shut out, I heard the clear call of the 
kill-deer plover as they passed overhead, heard 
it until it mingled with my dreams. " Provi- 
dence Farm" is indeed well named, for the 
birdy blessing of Providence rests upon it ; 
but were men more given to considering the 
ways and wants of wild life, we might find 
such pleasant places on every hand. Farms 
appear to be growing less farm-like. The 
sweet simplicity of colonial days has been 



Travels in a Tree-top 33 

well-nigh obliterated, and nothing really bet- 
ter has replaced it. On the other hand, a 
modern " country place," where Nature is 
pared down until nothing but the foundation- 
rocks remain, is, to say the least, an eyesore. 
There is more pleasure and profit in an Indian 
trail than in an asphaltum driveway. 

Westward lie the meadows, and beyond 
them the river. Seen as a whole, they are 
beautiful and, like all of Nature's work, will 
bear close inspedlion. The bird's-eye view 
to-day was too comprehensive to be alto- 
gether enjoyable : it was bewildering. How 
completely such a traft epitomizes a conti- 
nent ! The little creek is a river ; the hil- 
lock, a mountain ; the brushland, a forest ; 
the plowed traft, a desert. If this faft were 
not so generally forgotten we would be better 
content with what is immediately about us. 
Mere bigness is not everything. So, too, 
with animal life. We spend time and money 
to see the creatures caged in a menagerie, and 
never see the uncaged ones in the thicket be- 
hind the house. Every lion must roar, or we 
have not seen the show ; a lion rampant is 
everything, a lion couchant, nothing. There 
was no visible violence in the meadows to- 



34 Travels in a Tree-top 

day; Nature was couchant, and I was thankful. 
When the tempest drives over the land I want 
my snug harbor by the chimney-throat. The 
sparks can fly upward to join the storm if they 
will. The storms I enjoy are matters of hearsay. 

Take up a ponderous government quarto 
of the geological survey and glance over the 
splendid plates of remarkable rocks, canons, 
and high hills, and then look out of your 
window at the fields and meadow. What a 
contrast ! Yes, a decided one, and yet if 
you take an open-eyed walk you will find a 
good deal of the same thing, but on a smaller 
scale. You have not thought of it before ; 
that is all. I put this matter to a praftical 
test not long ago, and was satisfied with the 
result. The last plate had been looked at 
and the book was closed with a sigh, and a 
restless youth, looking over the wide range 
of fields before him, was thinking of the 
grand mountains, strange deserts, and deep 
canons pidlured in the volume on his lap, and 
comparing such a country with the monoto- 
nous surroundings of his home. 

" What a stupid place this part of the 
world is !" he said at last. " I wish I could 
go out West." 



Travels in a Tree- top ^^ 

" Perhaps it is not so stupid as it looks," 
I replied. " Let's take a walk." 

I knew what the book described at which 
the lad had been looking, and had guessed 
his thoughts. We started for a ramble. 

" Let us follow this little brook as far as 
we can," I suggested, "and see what a stupid 
country can teach us," purposely quoting my 
companion's words, with a little emphasis. 

Not fifty rods from beautiful old trees the 
colledled waters, as a little brook, flowed 
over an outcropping of stiff clay, and here 
we voluntarily paused, for what one of us 
had seen a hundred times before was now 
invested with new interest. There was here 
not merely a smooth scooping out of a mass 
of the clay, to allow the waters to pass swiftly 
by ; the least resisting veins or strata, those 
containing the largest percentage of sand, had 
yielded quickly and been deeply gullied, 
while elsewhere the stiff, black ridges, often 
almost perpendicular, still withstood the cur- 
rent, and, confining the waters to narrow 
limits, produced a series of miniature rapids 
and one whirlpool that recalled the head- 
waters of many a river. 

Near by, where, when swollen by heavy 



^6 Travels in a Tree- top 

rains, the brook had filled the little valley, 
temporary rivulets had rushed with fury over 
the clay, and cut in many places deep and 
narrow transverse channels. From their steep 
sides projected many a pebble that gave us 
"overhanging rocks," and one small bowlder 
bridged a crevice in the clay, and was in use 
at the time as a highway for a colony of ants. 
Near it stood slender, conical pillars of 
slightly cemented sand, some six inches in 
height, and every one capped with a pebble 
of greater diameter than the apex of the sup- 
porting sand. These were indeed beautiful. 

** I have never seen them before," re- 
marked the boy. 

" Very likely," I replied, " but you have 
crushed them under foot by the dozens." 
They were not to be overlooked now, 
though, and in them he saw perfedt repro- 
dudlions of wonderful ** monument rocks" 
which he had so lately seen piftured in the 
ponderous government geological report. 

Withdrawing to the field beyond, where a 
bird's-eye view of the brook's course could 
be obtained, we had spread out before us a 
miniature, in most of its essentials, of a canon 
country. The various tints of the clay gave 



Travels in a Tree-top 37 

the many-colored rocks ; the different densi- 
ties of the several strata resulted in deep or 
shallow ravines, fantastic arches, caverns, and 
beetling precipices. On a ridiculously small 
scale, you may say. True, but not too small 
for the eyes of him who is anxious to learn. 
A few rods farther down the stream we 
came to a small sandy island which divided 
the brook and made a pleasant variety after a 
monotonous course through nearly level 
fields. A handful of the sand told the story. 
Here, meeting with so slight an obstruftion 
as a projefting root, the sandy clays from 
above had been deposited in part, and year 
after year, as the island grew, the crowded 
waters had encroached upon the yielding 
banks on either side, and made here quite a 
wide and shallow stream. Small as it was, 
this little sand-bar had the charafteristic feat- 
ures of all islands. The water rippled along 
its sides and gave it a pretty beach of sloping, 
snow-white sand, while scarcely more than 
half a foot inland the seeds of many plants 
had sprouted, and along the central ridge or 
backbone the sod was thick set, and several 
acorns, a year before, had sprouted through 
it. We found snails, spiders, and insedls 
4 



38 Travels in a Tree-top 

abundant, and faint footprints showed that 
it was not overlooked by the pretty teetering 
sand-piper. 

Now came a total change. Abruptly turn- 
ing from its former straightforward course, 
the brook entered a low-lying swamp, 
crowded to the utmost with dense growths 
of tangled vines and stunted trees. The 
water was no longer sparkling and colorless, 
but amber-tinted, and in many a shallow pool 
looked more like ink. Life here appeared 
in many forms. Small mud-minnows, turtles, 
and snakes were found in the gloomy, weed- 
hidden pools, and numberless insefls crowded 
the rank growths above as well as the waters 
beneath. The mutual dependence of vege- 
tation and animal life was here very striking. 
Previously we had found comparatively little 
either in the brook or about it, but now our 
eyes were gladdened not only with what I 
have mentioned, but birds, too, were in abun- 
dance. 

Bent upon freeing my native county from 
the charge of stupidity, I led the way through 
this " dismal swamp." It was no easy task. 
Nowhere were we sure of our footing, and 
it required constant leaping from root to root 



Travels in a Tree-top 39 

of the larger trees. There was at times no 
well-defined channel, and often we could hear 
the gurgling waters hurrying beneath our feet, 
yet catch no glimpse of them. 

Here, too, other springs welled to the sur- 
face, and the augmented volume of waters 
finally left the swamp a stream of considerable 
size, which, after a tortuous course through 
many fields, entered a deep and narrow ravine. 
After untold centuries the brook has worn 
away the surface soil over which it originally 
flowed, then the gravel beneath, and so down 
to the clay, thirty feet below. Upon this 
now rest the bowlders and such coarser mate- 
rial as the waters could not transport. 

Clinging to the trees growing upon the 
sides of the ravine, we closely followed the 
course of the troubled, bubbling, foamy 
waters, stopping ever and anon to look at 
the exposed sections of sand and gravel here 
shown in curious alternate layers. The 
meaning of the word " deposits," so fre- 
quently met with in descriptive geology, 
was made plain, and when we noticed of 
how mixed a character was the coarse gravel, 
it was easy to comprehend what had been 
read of that most interesting phase of the 



40 Travels in a Tree-top 

world's past history, the glacial epoch, or 
great ice age. The gravel was no longer an 
unsuggestive accumulation of pebbles, but 
associated rolled and water-worn fragments 
of a hundred different rocks that by the 
mighty forces of ice and water had been 
brought to their present position from re- 
gions far away. 

The ravine ended at the meadows, through 
which the waters passed with unobstructed 
flow " to join the brimming river." As we 
stood upon the bank of the mighty stream I 
remarked, " This is a stupid country, per- 
haps, but it has some merits." I think the 
boy thought so, too. 

The meadows are such a comprehensive 
place that no one knows where to begin, if 
the attempt is made to enumerate their feat- 
ures. There is such a blending of dry land 
and wet, open and thicket-grown, hedge and 
brook and scattered trees, that it is bewilder- 
ing if you do not choose some one point 
for close inspeftion. From the tree-top I 
overlook it all, and try in vain to determine 
whether the azure strip of flowering iris or 
the flaunting crimson of the Turk's cap lilies 



Travels in a Tree-top 41 

is the prettier. Beyond, in damper soil, the 
glistening yellow of the sunflowers is really 
too bright to be beautiful ; but not so where 
the water is hidden by the huge circular leaves 
of the lotus. They are majestic as well as 
pretty, and the sparse bloom, yellow and 
rosy pink, is even the more conspicuous by 
reason of its background. How well the 
birds know the wild meadow trafts ! They 
have not forsaken my tree and its surround- 
ings, but for one here I see a dozen there. 
Mere inky specks, as seen from my point of 
view, but I know them as marsh-wrens and 
swamp-sparrows, kingbirds and red-wings, 
that will soon form those enormous flocks 
that add so marked a feature to the autumn 
landscape. It needs no field-glass to mark 
down the passing herons that, coming from 
the river-shore, take a noontide rest in the 
overgrown marsh. 

I had once, on the very spot at which I 
was now looking, an unlooked-for adventure. 
For want of something better to do, I pushed 
my way into the weedy marsh until I reached 
a prostrate tree-trunk that during the last 
freshet had stranded there. It was a wild 
place. The tall rose-mallow and wavy cat- 
4* 



42 Travels in a Tree-top 

tail were far above my head, and every trace 
of civilization was efFeftually shut out. It 
was as much a wilderness as any jungle in 
the tropics. Nor was I alone. Not a 
minute elapsed before a faint squeak told me 
that there were meadow-mice in the hollow 
log on which I sat. Then the rank grass 
moved and a least bittern came into view and 
as quickly disappeared. I heard continually 
the cackle of the king-rail, and the liquid twit- 
tering of the marsh-wrens was a delight. The 
huge globular nests of these birds were every- 
where about me ; but the birds did not think 
of me as having any evil designs upon them, 
so they came and went as freely as if alone. 
This is bird-viewing that one too seldom 
enjoys nowadays. Often, and very suddenly, 
all sound ceased and every bird disappeared. 
I did not recognize the cause at first, but was 
enlightened a moment later. A large bird 
passed over, and its very shadow frightened 
the little marsh-dwellers. If not, the shadow 
and fright were a coincidence several times 
that morning. The day, for me, ended with 
the unusual chance of a close encounter with 
a great blue heron. I saw the bird hover for 
a moment diredtly overhead, and then, let- 



Travels in a Tree-top 43 

ting its legs drop, it descended with lead-like 
rapidity. I leaned backward to avoid it, and 
could have touched the bird when it reached 
the ground, it was so near. I shall never 
know which was the more astonished. Cer- 
tainly, had it chosen, it could have stabbed 
me through and through. 

I was glad to be again on drier land and in 
open country. There had been adventure 
enough ; and yet, as seen from a distance, 
this bit of marsh was but weeds and water. 

Southward there stands the remnant of a 
forest : second- and third-growth woodland 
usually ; for trees of really great age are now 
generally alone. I can see from where I sit 
three primeval beeches that are known to 
be over two centuries old, and not far away 
towered one giant tulip-tree that since the 
country's earliest settlement had stood like a 
faithful sentinel, guarding the south bank of 
a nameless spring brook. Ever a thing of 
beauty, it shone with added splendor at night, 
when the rising full moon rested in its arms, 
as if weary at the very outset of her journey. 
My grandfather told me that in his boyhood 
it was known as the " Indian tree," because 
a basket-maker and his squaw had a wigwam 



44 Travels in a Tree-top 

there. That was a century ago, and often, 
of late years, I have hunted on the spot 
for some trace of these redskins, but found 
nothing, although all about, in every field, 
were old Indian relics, even their cherished 
tobacco-pipes. Small, recent growths of 
timber, even where they have succeeded an 
ancient forest, are not, as a rule, attraftive. 
Their newness is too evident, and, except 
for a few passing birds, they are not apt to 
harbor much wild life. As I look at the 
mingled foliage of oaks and elms, beeches, 
hickories, and wild cherry, I give little heed 
to that before me and recall forests worthy 
of the name, doing precisely what I have 
declared unwise. A naturalist could find 
more material in these few acres of wood- 
land than he could "work up" in a lifetime. 
I have underrated them. From the little 
thicket of blackberry vines I see a rabbit 
slowly loping, as if in search of food. It is 
a full-grown fellow, and suggests the round 
of the traps in late autumn and the woods in 
winter. 

I never knew a boy brought up in the 
country who was not at one time an enthu- 
siastic trapper. Just as mankind in the in- 



Travels in a Tree-top 45 

fancy of the world were forced to pit their 
energy and skill against the cunning of the 
animals needed for food or of such that by 
reason of their fierceness endangered human 
life, so the country boy of to-day puts his 
intelligence to work to circumvent the supe- 
riority of such animal life as by fleetness of 
foot or stroke of wing can avoid the pursuer. 
It is a question largely of brain against ana- 
tomical strufture. No Indian, even, ever 
outran a deer, nor savage anywhere by mere 
bodily exertion stopped the flight of a bird. 
Men were all sportsmen, in a sense, when 
sport, as we call it, was necessary to human 
existence. As centuries rolled by, such 
animals and birds as came in daily conta£l 
with man necessarily had their sleepy wits 
aroused, and now it is a case of cunning 
against cunning. We are all familiar with 
such phrases as " wild as a hawk" and " shy 
as a deer." In the morning of man's career 
on earth there were no such words as " shy" 
and ** wild." They came into use, as words 
are constantly coming into our language, be- 
cause circumstances make them a necessity ; 
and as men were trappers before they were 
traders or tillers of the field, so the words 



46 Travels in a Tree-top 

are old, and while animal life lasts they will 
be retained. 

Nowadays we generally outgrow this love 
of trapping, or it remains in the love of sport 
with gun or rod. But, old Izaak Walton and 
Frank Forrester to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing, I hold that nothing in fishing or shooting 
has that freshness, that thrilling excitement, 
that close touch with nature, that clings to 
our early days, when, in autumn and winter, 
we went the round of the traps. How 
through the long night we had visions of the 
rabbit cautiously approaching the box-trap 
on the edge of the swamp ! How clearly we 
saw in the corner of the weedy old worm- 
fence the stupid opossum bungling along, and 
awoke with a start as the clumsy creature 
sprang the trap from the outside ! I pity the 
boy who has not had such a distressing dream. 

No boy ever turned out before sunrise with 
a smiling countenance to milk or help in any 
way with farm work ; but how different when 
it was a matter of the traps he had set the 
night before ! The anticipation of success is 
an all-sufficient incentive, and neither bitter 
cold nor driving storm deters him. Of a 
winter dawn much might be said. No boy 



Travels in a Tree-top 47 

ever was abroad so early that the squirrels 
were not before him, and in the fading light 
of the stars he will hear the crows cawing 
and the blue-jays chattering in the woods. 
To the naturalist, of course, such time of 
day is full of suggestiveness ; but the general 
belief that it is a proper time to sleep will 
never be given up. Indeed, judging others 
by myself, as the boy gets well on in his teens 
there is a growing disposition to let the traps 
go until broad daylight and even until after 
breakfast. This is unfortunate in two ways : 
there is a likelihood of seeing animal life in 
the full flush of aftivity in the pre-sunlit hours 
that is unknown as the day advances ; the 
night-prowlers are all gone to their dens, and 
the birds that roost in colonies have dispersed 
for the day. One seldom overtakes a raccoon 
or a weasel at or near noontide, and in the 
woods where a thousand robins have roosted 
there may now not be one. Then, again, 
your visit to the traps may be anticipated 
if you are too deliberate in starting on your 
rounds. This is an experience that no boy 
of spirit can calmly undergo, and no wonder. 
The rude box-trap was not easy to make, con- 
sidering the usual condition of tools upon a 



48 Travels in a Tree-top 

farm. The hunt for likely places whereat to 
set it had been real labor. The long tramp 
in the gloaming when tired out from a day 
at school ; the early tramp, before sunrise 
perhaps, for he must be on time at school that 
morning, — all this is to be considered ; but 
if success crowns the effort, all is well. On 
the other hand, to find that some rascal has 
been ahead of you and your labor has gone 

for nothing I never knew a boy to be 

a saint at such a time. 

I can recall a well-marked rabbit-path I 
once found, half a mile from home, and with 
great secrecy carried one of my traps to the 
place. It was on the next farm, and so I had 
to be more than usually careful. Nothing 
could be done in daylight for fear the boys 
living on that farm would find me out, and 
this sort of poaching was not tolerated. At 
first I was successful, catching two fine rab- 
bits, and then, alas ! was so elated that, boy- 
like, I said too much. Some one must have 
tracked me, for I caught no more, although it 
was evident that the trap had been disturbed. 
Straightway I suspected treachery, and pre- 
pared for revenge. 

Now, auntie had a fur tippet, or " boa," 



Travels in a Tree- top 49 

as she called it, which was just six feet long. 
The moths one summer had ruined it, and for 
some time it had been lying around uncared 
for and a plaything for the younger children. 
This I appropriated, and fastened to one end 
of it a rabbit's head, with the ears wired up 
and with huge painted marbles bulging from 
the sockets for eyes. It was a startling if not 
life-like creature. 

Armed with this, I started after dark to the 
trap, and soon had all in readiness for my vic- 
tim. I coiled the " boa" into the rear of the 
box and placed the head near the opening of 
the trap. The " figure-of-four" triggers were 
laid outside in such a way as to suggest that 
the trap had been sprung by an animal. Then 
I went home. 

The next morning I went to school with- 
out visiting the spot, fearing I might meet 
with the supposed offender. All day long I 
wondered. No boy had any marvellous tale 
to tell and no one looked at all guilty. There 
soon came over me a feeling that perhaps I 
had played a trick upon myself, and by sun- 
down I was rather reludlant to determine if 
anything had happened ; but go I did. The 
trap had evidently been disturbed. The 



50 Travels in a Tree-top 

" boa" with the rabbit's head was lying at full 
length outside and the bushes were broken as 
if a bull had rushed through them. But who 
or what had been there ? 

Two days of most distressing doubt passed, 
and then came Saturday. I was ill at ease and 
took no pleasure in my holiday ; but about 
noon our neighbor came over, and I heard 
him tell grandfather how, on Fifth-day, while 
the family were at breakfast. Bill, the bound 
boy, came rushing into the room and ex- 
claimed, excitedly, ** Something from the 
menagerie's broke loose and got in the rab- 
bit-trap !" 

I had had my revenge. 

A wood, to be at its best, should be located 
on the shore of a lake or river, or, perhaps 
better still, a river should run through it. 
Here are my impressions of such a wood, from 
my note-book of 1892, under date of May i : 

Nothing could have been more fitting than 
to take a May-day outing at such a place. 
The swift current of the Great Egg Harbor 
River rolled resistlessly along, its waters black 
as night, save where, over the pebbly shal- 
lows, it gleamed like polished amber. The 
wind that swayed the tall crowns of the tow- 



Travels in a Tree-top 51 

ering pines made fitting music, according well 
with the rippling laugh of the fretted river, 
while heard above all were the joyous songs 
of innumerable warblers. 

We had placed our boat upon a wagon six 
miles below our point of departure, and partly 
realized on our way what this pine region 
really was. The cedar swamp, the oak 
openings, the arbutus that gave color to the 
narrow wagon-track, the absence of man's 
interference, — all tended to give us the full 
significance of that most suggestive word, wil- 
derness. We needed but to catch a glimpse 
of an Indian to see this part of creation pre- 
cisely as it was in pre-Columbian days. I 
sat for some time in the boat before taking up 
the anchor. This was but the entrance, I 
was told, to spots more beautiful, but it was 
hard to believe. Here was a river hidden in 
a forest, and what more could one wish ? 
The warblers well knew that May-day had 
come again, and every one of the mighty 
host greeted the brilliant sunshine. There 
seemed literally to be hundreds of them. 
Flashing like gems were redstarts, light as 
swallows upon the wing. Bright-spotted 
warblers, and others sombre gray, laughed 



52 Travels in a Tree-top 

as they tarried on the trembling twigs ; then, 
mounting into the sunlight, sang loudly as 
they flew, or darted into gloomy nooks so 
hidden that not even a sunbeam could follow 
them. ^ 

The river with its attendant birds could 
not claim all the merit ; the land was no less 
beautiful. The oaks were not yet in leaf, 
but there was no lack of green. The holly's 
foliage was bright as May, the polished 
leaves of the tea-berry shone as a midsummer 
growth, the ink-berry had defied the winter's 
storms, and the maples glowed as a great ruddy 
flame. Really distinft as was every objeft, 
yet, as a whole, the outlook was dreary, hazy, 
half obscure, as we looked direftly into the 
wood, where the drooping moss festooned 
the branches of the smaller oaks. 

No voyager ever set forth from so fair a 
port. 

My companion knew the route, and with 
an oar he took his place astern to guide the 
boat safely down the swift stream. It was 
all right as it proved, but at times I forgot 
that I had come to see the forest. Instead, 
an element of doubt as to the guide's ability 
came painfully to the front. With devilish 



Travels in a Tree-top 53 

malignancy, as I thought, trees had prostrated 
themselves and rested just beneath the water's 
surface, or stood up, with outreached arms, 
as if defying us. How we passed many a 
crook and turn I cannot now remember. I 
was too much occupied with desperately 
clutching at anything within reach to notice 
the " when" or " how," but there still re- 
mains the delicious sensation of suddenly 
shooting into smooth water and feeling — 
brave as a lion. 

For several miles on either side of the 
stream we had a typical mixed forest. The 
willow-oak predominated at times, and the 
delicate foliage, so unlike other oaks, was very 
beautiful. The leaves appeared translucent in 
the bright sunlight, fairly sparkled, and once 
made a splendid background to scarlet tanagers 
that flashed through them. In this long reach 
of dense woods there were fewer birds than at 
our starting-point, or perhaps they held back 
as we passed. But other life was not want- 
ing. From many a projefting stump there slid 
many a turtle into the dark waters, and a mink 
or musk-rat crossed our bow. Careful search 
would no doubt have revealed numerous creat- 
ures, for here was a safe retreat for all the 



54 Travels in a Tree-top 

fauna of the State. The deer are not yet quite 
gone, possibly a few bears remain. Certainly 
the raccoon and otter must be abundant. I 
was constantly on the lookout for minks, for 
the river abounds in fish. This animal is 
sometimes mistaken for a huge snake, as it 
rises several inches above the water at times, 
and has then a rather startling appearance. 
An old fisherman on Chesapeake Bay told me 
that he had seen a mink with a huge eel in its 
mouth come to the surface, and then the 
wriggling fish and long, lithe body of the 
mink together looked like two serpents fight- 
ing. I can readily imagine it. Birches, 
liquidambars, and pines in clusters would 
next command attention, and usually there 
was a dense undergrowth. Holding the boat, 
at times, we could hear the water rushing 
through the roots of this tangled mass, and 
found that what we had supposed was firm 
land afforded no certain footing, and a bluff 
of firm earth was very welcome when we 
thought of landing for a hasty lunch. This 
firm earth did indeed support us, but in re- 
ality it was the most unstable of shifting sands, 
being held in place by reindeer-moss, par- 
tridge-berry, and other pine-barren growths. 



Travels in a Tree-top ^^ 

Nothing was in sight but the scrubby pines, 
and we had to be very careful that our fire 
did not get among the ** needles" and dash 
through the woods. I found here absolutely 
no birds. They seem all to prefer the tradls 
covered by deciduous trees ; but inseft-feeders 
could have flourished here. The steam of 
our dinner-pot brought more substantial forms 
than mosquitoes, one house-fly being deter- 
mined to share my Frankfurter and success- 
fully defying all attempts at capture. 

Again afloat, we soon came to the mouth 
of an inflowing stream called Dead River, 
said to be very deep. This point was per- 
haps the wildest of all. The open water 
here was very wide, and a forest of projecting 
stumps of various heights showed plainly that 
we were on the edge of an area of drowned 
land. In the distance was an unbroken back- 
ground of pines, which now looked black. At 
wide intervals could be seen huge pines 
that had escaped the charcoal-burner or lum- 
berman. The stems and lower branches 
were, of course, concealed, but in the hazy 
atmosphere the tops were as floating islands 
of darkest green, standing boldly out against 
the pearly sky behind them. 



^6 Travels in a Tree-top 

Here, at the mouth of Dead River, we be- 
held a pretty sight. A wood-duck with her 
brood rushed over the water in a most lively- 
manner, flecking the black expanse with 
patches of white foam. Such incidents add 
much to such a journey. An empty forest 
is as forbidding as an empty house. 

In the coves there were changes from the 
surrounding scenery that were not to be over- 
looked. A rank growth of golden-club rest- 
ing on the dark waters was very striking. 
The pifture was such as we see on a Claude 
Lorrain glass. Near by fresh sphagnum in 
a shallow pool was bronze and green : a place 
for frogs to squat unseen, but I could find none. 
How often this happens ! At the very places 
where we think animal life will be in abun- 
dance we can find no trace of it. Then, look- 
ing up, we see but trees. No break in the 
line that hems us in. Trees old and young, 
trees living and dead, great and small ; nothing 
but trees. 

The wind freshened as the day grew old, 
and doubly troubled were the waters. There 
was no rest for them now, even in sheltered 
nooks, and it was only by sturdy strokes of 
the oars that we made headway at all. There 



Travels in a Tree-top ^"j 

was no perceptible current to bear us along as 
before. The waves dashing against the bare 
trunks of trees long dead and now bent by the 
wind added much to the wild scene. Novel 
as it all was, I could not quite enjoy it. It 
was something to be contemplated from the 
shore, I thought. I know I was laughed at, 
but the many " blind" stumps, or those just 
beneath the surface, of which my companion 
spoke so unconcernedly came too promi- 
nently to mind when I least expefted them, 
and added much significance to the faft that 
I cannot swim. 

As we neared home the scene abruptly 
changed, and the river was lost in a wide ex- 
panse that might be called a lake if the faft 
was not so evident that it is a mill-pond. 
This, however, did not detraft from the 
beauty of the surroundings, and before our 
final landing we drew up to a bold bit of 
shore and searched, while it was yet day, for 
pyxie. There was an abundance of bloom- 
ing andromeda, too, and arbutus, with club- 
moss of richest green. I almost placed my 
hand on a centipede that glowed like an em- 
erald. It was resting on ruddy sphagnum, 
and made a splendid pidlure. I could not 



58 Travels in a Tree-top 

capture the creature. An attempt to do so 
on my part was followed by its disappearance 
with a suddenness that could be likened only 
to the flashes of light that played upon its 
back. Here I heard many frogs, but could 
find none. The rattle and peep were not 
like the voices of those in the meadows at 
home, and I wondered about Cope's new 
tiger-frog and the little green hyla that is so 
rare here in Jersey. Possibly I heard them 
both ; probably not. 

We returned to prosy life when the boat 
was lifted over the dam, and the incidents 
were few and commonplace in the short drift 
that carried us to an old wharf, a relic of the 
last century. 

What a difference between such a forest 
and a few hundred oaks and ashes at home ! 
and yet these are far better than treeless fields. 
It is these few trees that hold many of our 
migratory birds, and through them, in spring, 
troop the north-bound warblers. In the 
gloaming a small traft of woodland widens 
out, and, seeing no open country beyond, 
what does it matter, if we walk in a circle, 
whether it be one acre or one thousand ? 



Travels in a Tree-top 59 

There is good philosophy in ** Small favors 
thankfully received." Here in this little w^ood 
are beautiful white-footed mice, a shy, noc- 
turnal jerboa, flying-squirrels, and, if I mis- 
take not, a whole family of opossums. Here, 
until autumn, are wood-robins that never 
weary us by overmuch singing, and cat-birds, 
chewinks, and the rose-breasted grosbeak. 1 
do not complain, but as the summer passes I 
regret that these birds have their appointed 
time and will soon be gone. Why so soon? 
I often wonder, for their haunts do not lose 
their loveliness for weeks after they have dis- 
appeared. 

No wall of green above, about, 

They silently steal away ; 
With but a carpet of withered leaves, 

The minstrel will not stay. 

But the spot is no " banquet-hall deserted," 
for all that ; the departure of the summer 
birds is but to make way for those who have 
gladdened Canadian woods for many weeks. 
The purple finch will soon be here, and tree- 
sparrows in great companies, and the gentle 
white-throat ; and these, with our stately 
cardinal for a leader, will hold forth melodi- 



6o Travels in a Tree-top 

ously, though the north winds blow and the 
angry east wind brings the snow upon its 
wings. 

In the smile of winter sunshine there will 
be enafted another drama, but now it is 
comedy rather than tragedy. There are no 
conflifting interests now, no serious quarrels, 
no carking cares — the world is really in good 
humor and our days of early darkness are 
misunderstood. 

Let him who doubts — and there are but 
few who do not — turn from the worn lines 
of travel, go well out of the beaten path, 
and find, in the way-side nooks his neighbors 
have neglefted, most excellent company : 
birds of brave heart that can sing in the teeth 
of a storm ; and many a creature, wrapped in 
his furry coat, laughs at the earnest efforts of 
winter to keep him from his outings. 

Did I dare sit in this same oak when the 
leaves have fallen, I should have strange tales 
to tell, — tales so strange that the summertide 
would be commonplace in comparison. 



CHAPTER SECOND 

A HUJ^r FOR THE PTXIE 

^\TO storm raged to defeat a long-cherished 
■^ ^ plan, and we must laugh at threaten- 
ing clouds or miss many an outing. In 
dreams the pyxie had been blooming for 
weeks, and to prove that not all dreams go 
by contraries, I started on a flower-hunt. 
This is not always so tame and adventure- 
less a matter as one might think. There are 
wood-blooms that scorn even a trace of man's 
interference, and the pyxie is one of them. 
Nature alone can provide its wants, and only 
where Nature holds undisputed sway can it 
be found. To find this beautiful flower we 
must plunge into the wilderness. 

It was a long tramp, but never wanting a 
purpose for every step taken. Each turn 
in the path offered something new, and if 
ever for a moment a trace of weariness was 
felt, it was because even to our hungry eyes 
6 6i 



62 A Hunt for the Pyxie 

the wilderness was overfull. Bewildering 
multitudes are more to be feared than possi- 
ble dangers. There is no escape from the 
former. Not a tree or bush, not a bird or 
blossom, but to-day offered excellent reason 
why with them we should spend our time ; 
and how often they all spoke at once ! 

Except the ceaseless rattle of small frogs, 
there was no sound, for that sad sighing of the 
tall pines seems but the rhythmic breathing 
of silence ; or, passing from the wet grounds 
to the higher, drier, and more barren trafts, 
we heard only the crisp crackling of the 
reindeer-moss we crushed at every step. 
Although 

" It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, 
And that craves wary walking," 

we gave no thought to possible danger, — for 
rattlesnakes are still to be found. Not even 
when we stooped to pick the bright berries 
of winter-green did we think of a coiled ser- 
pent buried in dead leaves ; and what oppor- 
tunity for murder the serpent had as we 
buried our faces in pillows of pink and pearly 
arbutus ! 

At last we reached South River (in South- 



A Hunt for the Pyxie 6^ 

em New Jersey), and just here was no place 
to tarry, unless to court melancholy. It was 
not required that my companion should enu- 
merate the reasons why the one-time farm 
along the river-bank had been abandoned. 
A glance at the surrounding fields told the 
whole story. There was, indeed, barren- 
ness, — and very different, this, from what ob- 
tains in localities near by to which the same 
term is applied. In the so-called pine barrens 
there is a luxuriant vegetation ; but here about 
the deserted house and out-building there 
was nothing but glistening sand, moss, and 
those pallid grasses that suggest death rather 
than life, however feeble. And how widely 
different is it to be surrounded by ruin 
wrought by man, and to be in a forest where 
man has never been ! Could I not have 
turned my back upon the scene and looked 
out only upon the river, the day's pleasure 
would have vanished. But we were soon 
away, and a naturalist's paradise was spread 
before us. What constitutes such a place ? 
Not necessarily one where man has never 
been : it will suffice if Nature has withstood 
his interference ; and this is true of these 
pine barrens, this weedy wilderness, this 



64 A Hunt for the Pyxie 

silent battle-field where the struggle for ex- 
istence never ceases, and yet, as we see it, 
peaceful as the fleecy clouds that fleck an 
April sky. 

Though the wind that swept the wide 
reach of waters close at hand still smacked 
of wintry weather, there was a welcome 
warmth on shore. The oaks even hinted of 
the coming leaf. Their buds were so far 
swollen that the sharp outlines of bare twigs 
against the sky were rounded off. The ruddy 
stems of the blueberry bushes gave to the 
river-bank a fire-like glow, and yet more 
telling was the wealth of bright golden glow 
where the tall Indian grass waved in all its 
glory. The repellent desolation of mid- 
winter, so common to our cold-soil upland 
fields, was wholly wanting here ; for, while 
nothing strongly suggested life as we think 
of it, even in early spring, yet nothing re- 
called death, the familiar feature of a mid- 
winter landscape. 

The scattered cedars were not gloomy to- 
day. Their green-black foliage stood out in 
bold relief, a fitting background to the pifture 
of Spring's promises. That the sea was not 
far oiF is evident, for even here, a dozen miles 



A Hunt for the Pyxie 6^ 

from the ocean, many of these trees were bent 
and squatty at the top, as are all those that 
face the fury of storms along the coast. 
Every one harbored north-bound migrating 
birds ; restless, warbling kinglets principally. 
No other tree seemed to attraft these pretty 
birds, many a flock passing by scores of oaks 
to the next cedar in their line of march. 
The clustered pines were not similarly fa- 
vored, not a bird of any kind appearing about 
them, and life of all kinds was wholly absent 
in the long aisles between their stately trunks. 
Our path led us through one great grove 
where every tree grew straight and tall as a 
ship's mast. The light that filled this wood 
was strangely beautiful. Nothing stood out 
distinftly. To have passed here in the gloam- 
ing would have tried weak nerves. Even in 
the glare of noonday my imagination was ab- 
normally aftive, every stunted shrub and 
prostrate log assuming some startling shape. 
Think of such a place after sunset ! Let an 
owl whoop in your ears when hedged in by 
thick-set trees ! Philosophize as one will in 
daylight, it goes for little now, and the days 
of Indians, cougars, and all ill-natured beasts 
come trooping back. This distrust of dark- 
« 6* 



66 A Hunt for the Pyxie 

ness is not mere cowardice, and I would 
accept no one's statement that he is wholly 
free of it. Every sound becomes unduly 
significant when we are alone in a wilderness ; 
often unpleasantly so, even during the day, 
and 

" in the night, imagining some fear, 
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!" 

Out of the pines and into the oak woods : 
the change was very abrupt, and as complete 
as possible. Every feature of the surround- 
ings was bathed in light now, and the emer- 
gence from the pine forest's gloom restored 
our spirits. We are ever craving variety, and 
there was positive beauty in every stunted 
oak's ugliness, and from them we needed but 
to turn our heads to see thrifty magnolias 
near the river-bank. These have no special 
enemy, now that the beavers are gone, and 
thrive in the black mud by the water's edge; 
better, by far, than the gum-trees near them, 
for these were heavy laden with pallid mis- 
tletoe, — to me a most repugnant growth. 

We reached open country at last, and here 
were birds without number. How quickly 
all else fades at such a time ! The whole 



A Hunt for the Pyxie 67 

valley trembled with the ringing whistle of 
a thousand red-wings. A few swallows — the 
first of their kind to return — darted over the 
wide waters and rested on projefting branches 
of trees that floods had stranded on the 
islands. The sprightly kill-deers ran with 
such dainty steps over the sand that I could 
not find their footprints. They, too, were 
pioneer birds, but none the less light-hearted 
because alone. They sang with all their last 
year's earnestness, scattering music among 
the marshes where frogs were now holding 
high carnival. They were very tame, at 
least so far as we were concerned, but a little 
in doubt as to what a stray hawk might be 
about. But they left us only to make room 
for others, and whether we looked riverward 
or landward mattered not: it was birds, birds, 
birds ! Here a hundred sparrows in an oak, 
there a troop of snow-birds in the bushes, a 
whistling titmouse sounding his piercing 
notes, the plaintive bluebird floating over- 
head, the laugh of the loon at the bend 
of the river, and buzzards searching for 
stranded herring where the seine had been 
drawn. 

A flock of herons, too, passed overhead. 



68 A Hunt for the Pyxie 

and, had they not seen us, might have stopped 
here on the river-shore. What an addition 
to a landscape ! and yet now so seldom seen. 
No birds can be more harmless than they, 
yet not even the hawks are subjedl to greater 
persecution. Not long since these birds 
were abundant, and a " heronry" was one of 
the ** sights" of many a neighborhood ; but 
people now scarcely know what a " heronry" 
is. The very word suggests how rapidly our 
large birds are disappearing, and their roost- 
ing-places, where hundreds gathered and 
nested, too, in season, are matters of " ancient 
history." In fear and trembling, the herons 
that linger about our watercourses singly 
seek secluded trees wherein to rest, and, I 
fear, even then sleep with one eye open. A 
fancy, on the part of women, for heron 
plumes has wrought a deal of mischief. 

But where is the pyxie ? We knew it 
must be near at hand, but why make haste 
to find it ? All else was so beautiful here, 
why not wait even until another day ? The 
river-bank was itself a study. At the top, 
sand of snowy whiteness ; then a ribbon of 
clay over which water trickled carrying iron 
in solution, that was slowly cementing a sand 



A Hunt for the Pyxie 69 

stratum beneath, where every degree of den- 
sity could be found, from solid rock to a 
paste-like mass that we took pleasure in 
moulding into fantastic shapes, thereby re- 
newing our dirt-pie days. 

A little later in the year, this bluff, now 
streaked and spotted, will be green with the 
broad-leaved sundews, curious carnivorous 
plants that here take the place of grasses. 
There is a filiform sundew that grows near 
by, where the ground is high, if not dry ; but 
it, too, waits for warmer days. Not so the 
pyxie. Almost at first glance, as we left the 
bluff, we saw it, sparkling white, nestled 
among the gray mats of reindeer-moss, or 
fringed by shining winter-green still laden 
with its crimson fruit. 

Here the earth was strangely carpeted. 
Sphagnum, beautiful by reason of rich color, 
gray-green moss, and the object of our long 
tramp, — pyxie. No botany does it justice, 
passing it by with the mere mention of its 
barbarous name, Pyxidanthera barbulata. It 
might be thought the meanest of all weeds, 
but is, in truth, the chiefest glory of this 
wonderful region. 

Is it strange we regretted that Time would 



yo A Hunt for the Pyxie 

not slacken his pace ? I know not where 
else, in these northern regions, so much is to 
be seen, and so soon. Spring, elsewhere, is 
the round year's strangest child, often too 
forward, and too often backward ; but her 
accomplishments here and now are beyond 
criticism. Such perfeft work, and yet she 
is not out of her teens. The day was 
April I. 



CHAPTER THIRD 

THE COMIJ^G OF THE BIRDS 

' I "'HE moon in April is an important fac- 
"^ tor in the progress of that event — the 
coming of the birds — which makes every 
spring memorable. While not disposed to 
wait upon it too long, still, there is little doubt 
but that the birds that have been wintering 
afar south travel very largely by its light, and 
when it happens that the moon fulls between 
the middle and the twenty-fifth of the month, 
the flights of thrushes, orioles, wrens, and 
other migrants reach us a week earlier than 
when the nights are dark during the same 
period. Temperature, storms, and general 
backwardness of the season do not seem to 
have a like importance in bird economy. 

Of course, by the coming of the birds I 
do not refer to the pioneers that are in ad- 
vance of every company. Indeed, I have 
seldom announced the first of the season, but 

71 



72 The Coming of the Birds 

I have been met by the man who was at least 
one day ahead of me ; so firstlings are not 
favorites. 

There is every year the one memorable 
morning when we can say, in broad terms, 
" The birds are here." When the oriole 
whistles from the tallest tree in the lawn ; 
when the wren chatters from the portal of 
his old-time home; when the indigo-finch 
sings in the weedy pasture ; when lisping 
warblers throng every tree and shrub ; while 
over all, high in air, the twittering swallows 
dart in ecstasy ; and at last, the day-long con- 
cert over, whippoorwills in the woods pipe 
their monotonous refrain. The Indians were 
right : when there came such days as this, 
they had no further fear of frost, and we need 
have but little. Our climate certainly has 
changed slightly since their time, but we have 
in such a bird-full day an assurance that the 
clinging finger-tips of Winter have at last re- 
laxed and his hold upon our fields and forests 
is lost. 

A word again of the advance guard. The 
brown thrush came on the seventeenth of the 
month (April, 1892), when there were no 
leafy thickets and the maples only were in 



The Coming of the Birds j^ 

bloom. What a glorious herald he proved ! 
and so he always proves. Before the sun was 
up I heard him in my dreams, and later the 
fancy proved a fadl. Perched at the very top 
of an old walnut-tree, where the wintry world 
was spread before him, he sang that song 
peculiarly his own. 

No hint of blushing roses on the hill, 
The buds are sleeping yet upon the plain, 

The blight of dreary winter clingeth still. 
The forest weeps where falls the chilly rain. 

Scarce hopeful leaf-buds shrink — death's solemn hush 
Rests on the field, the meadow brook along, 

Till bleaks the day, O happy day ! the thrush 
Foretells the coming summer in a song. 

Two days later it was almost summer, and 
tripping along the river's pebbly beach were 
spotted sand-pipers. They were ahead of 
time this year, I thought, but none the less 
happy because the trees were bare and the 
water cold; but, stranger still, in the sheltered 
coves of the mill-pond, that now refledled 
the gold of the spice-wood and the crimson 
of the overhanging maples, there were war- 
blers, merry as in midsummer, and a pair, at 
least, of small thrushes. A bittern, too, stood 

D 7 



74 The Coming of the Birds 

in the weedy marsh. There they had 
gathered on that sunny, summery day, as if 
warm weather was an established fadl ; but 
how different the next morning, when a cold 
north-east storm prevailed ! How well it 
showed that one such sunny day does not 
make a season ! How clearly it proved that 
birds have no prophetic insight ! They were 
caught and suffered and disappeared. Did 
they fly above the clouds and go to some 
distant point, free of chilling rain, or did 
they hide in the cedar swamps ? This prob- 
lem I did not essay to solve. In the few 
cedars along the river-shore I found nothing 
but winter residents, but I made no careful 
search. A few days later and spring-like 
conditions again prevailed and every day some 
new bird was seen, but not until May i 
could we say, ** The birds have come." 

These uncertain April days are not dis- 
appointing. We are not warranted in ex- 
pefting much of them, and whatsoever we 
do meet with is just so much more than we 
had reason to look for, — an added bit of good 
luck that increases our love for the year's 
fourth month ; but if no migrant came, there 
is little likelihood that the pastures and river- 



The Coming of the Birds 75 

shore would be silent. There never was an 
April that had not its full complement of 
robins and blithe meadow-larks, of glori- 
ous crested tits and gay cardinals, of restless 
red-wings and stately grakles, and these are 
quite equal to driving dull care away, and 
keeping it away, if the migrants did not 
come at all. Even in March, and early in 
the month, we often have a foretaste of abun- 
dant bird-life ; an intimation of what a few 
weeks will bring us. A bright March morn- 
ing in 1 893 was an instance of this. I walked 
for miles along the river-bank with a learned 
German who was enthusiastic about every- 
thing but what interested me. This may 
not seem to be a promising outlook, but we 
undertook to convert each other. I was to 
give up my frivolity, he determined. My 
effort was to get his dry-as-dust whimsies out 
of him. The great ice-gorge of the past 
winter was now a torrent of muddy waters 
and huge cakes of crystal that rushed and 
roared not only through the river's channel, 
but over half the meadow-land that bordered 
it. It was, I admit, an excellent opportunity 
to study the effefts of such occurrences, for 
to them is due the shaping of the valley. 



76 The Coming of the Birds 

and gravel transportation, and all that ; but 
then there was the efFeft of light and shade 
upon the wonderful scene, and beauty like 
this crowded out my taste for geology. The 
sky was darkly blue, flecked with great 
masses of snow white-cloud that drifted 
between the sun and earth, casting shadows 
that blackened the ice and brought winter 
back again ; but a moment later a flood of 
sunshine as promptly changed all, and the 
bluebirds hinted of spring. Then, too, the 
gulls and crows screamed above the roar and 
crunching of the ice as it struck the scattered 
trees, while in every sheltered nook was a 
full complement of song-sparrows. Why any 
one should bother about geology at such a 
time I could not see ; but my companion 
was intent upon problems of the ice age, and 
continually remarked, " Now, if" or " Don't 
you see ?" but I always cut him short with 
** See that crow ?" or " Hear that sparrow ?" 
No, he had not seen or heard the birds, and 
neither had I his particular impressions. 
At last the sunshine broke upon him, and 
he laughed aloud when he saw the crows 
trying to steal a ride on ice-rafts that con- 
tinually upset. I was hopeful now, and he 



The Coming of the Birds 77 

soon heard the birds that sang, and whistled 
after a long line of kill-deer plover that hur- 
ried by, every one calling to his fellows. It 
was something to know that the coming of 
the birds can rouse a German out of his 
everlasting problems. He had more to say 
of the springtide so near at hand than had I, 
and, nosing over the ground, found nine 
vigorous plants in aftive growth, and spoke 
so learnedly of Cyperus, Galium, Allium, and 
Saponaria that I as glibly thought, in jealous 
mood, " Confound him !" for now he was 
taking possession of my province and show- 
ing me my littleness ; but then I had dragged 
him out of his problems. 

The truth is, I was in something like 
despair when we started out, for I feared a 
iefture on physical geography, and, indeed, 
did not quite escape ; but the bitter was well 
mixed with the sweet, and he in time listened 
with all my ardor to the birds that braved the 
boisterous wind and were not afraid of a river 
wilder than they had ever seen before. The 
day proved to be of more significance than as 
regards mere glacial geology. It was a fore- 
taste of what was coming in April. I drew 
a glowing pifture of what our April meant, 
7* 



78 The Coming of the Birds 

and pidlured a peaceful river and violets 
and meadow blossoms as bright as they were 
fragrant. My learned friend smiled, then 
grew enthusiastic ; must come again to see 
the birds as they arrived, and — must I say 
it ? — spoke of beer. Alas ! it was Sunday. 

There are two reasons why April birds are 
particularly attraftive. One is, there are 
fewer of them, and again, there is praftically 
no foliage to conceal them. Better one bird 
in full view than a dozen half hidden. Their 
songs, too, have a flavor of novelty, and ring 
so assuringly through the leafless woods. The 
ear forever bends graciously to promises, even 
though we know they will be broken ; but 
birds, unlike men, are not given to lying. 
When they promise May flowers and green 
leaves they mean it, and, so far as history re- 
cords, there has never been a May without 
them, not even the cold May of 18 16, when 
there was ice and snow. But aside from their 
singing, April birds offer the opportunity of 
studying their manners, which is better to 
know than the number of their tail-feathers 
or the color of their eggs. The brown 
thrush that sings so glibly from the bare 
branch of a lonely tree shows now, by his 



The Coming of the Birds 79 

way of holding himself and pointing his tail, 
that he is closely akin to the little wrens and 
their big cousin, the Carolina mocker, so 
called, which does not mock at all. Of all 
our April birds, I believe I love best the 
chewink, or swamp-robin. To be sure, he 
is no more a feature of April than of June, and 
many are here all winter ; but when he scat- 
ters the dead leaves and whistles his bi-syllabic 
refrain with a vim that rouses an echo, or 
mounts a bush and sings his few notes of real 
music, we forget that summer is only on the 
way, but not yet here. Of all our birds, I 
always fancied this one was most set in his 
singing, as he surely is in his ways ; but 
Cheney tells us that " this bird, like many 
others, can extemporize finely when the spirit 
moves him. For several successive days one 
season a chewink gave me very interesting 
exhibitions of the kind. He fairly revelled 
in the new song, repeating it times without 
number. Whether he stole it from the first 
strain of * Rock of Ages' or it was stolen from 
him or some of his family, is a question yet 
to be decided." Now, the chewink is a bird 
of character, and, above all things, dislikes 
interference, and he sings " for his own 



8o The Coming of the Birds 

pleasure, for he frequently lets himself out 
lustily when he knows he is all alone," as 
Dr. Placzeck has said of birds in general. I 
shall never forget a little incident I once wit- 
nessed, in which a chewink and a cardinal 
grosbeak figured. They reached the same 
bush at the same moment, and both started 
their songs. The loud whistle of the red- 
bird quite smothered the notes of the che- 
wink, which stopped suddenly before it was 
through and, with a squeak of impatience, 
made a dash at the intruder and nearly knocked 
him off his perch. Such haps and mishaps 
as these — and they are continually occurring 
— can only be seen in April or earlier, when 
we can see through the woods, and not merely 
the outer branches of the trees when in leaf. 
In April we can deleft, too, the earliest 
flowers, and they fit well with the songs of 
the forerunning birds. There is more, I 
think, for all of us in an April violet than in 
a June rose ; in a sheltered bit of turf with 
sprouting grass than in the wide pastures a 
month later. We do not hurry in-doors at 
the sudden coming of an April shower. 
The rain-drops that cling to the opening 
leaf-buds are too near real gems not to be 



The Coming of the Birds 8i 

fancied a veritable gift to us, and we toy 
with the baubles for the brief moment that 
they are ours. The sunshine that follows 
such a shower has greater magic in its touch 
than it possesses later in the year ; the buds of 
the morning now are blossoms in the after- 
noon, so quickening is the warmth of the first 
few days of spring. The stain of winter is 
washed away by an April shower, and the 
freshest green of the pasture is ever that 
which is newest. There is at times a subtle 
element in the atmosphere that the chemist 
calls " ozone," but a better name is ** snap." 
It dwells in April sunshine and is the invet- 
erate foe of inertia. It moves us, whether we 
will or not, and we are now in a hurry even 
when there is no need of haste. The 
" spring fever" that we hear of as a malady 
in town never counts as its victim the lover 
of an April outing. The beauty of novelty 
is greater than the beauty of abundance. Our 
recolleftion of a whole summer is but dim at 
best, but who forgets the beginnings thereof? 
We passed by unheeding many a sweet song 
before the season was over, but can recall, 
I venture to say, our first glimpse of the 
returning spring. Though the sky may be 
/ 



82 The Coming of the Birds 

gray, the earth brown, and the wind out of 
the north, let a thrush sing, a kinglet lisp, 
a crested tit whistle, and a tree-sparrow chirp 
among the swelling leaf-buds, and you have 
seen and heard that which is not only a de- 
light in itself, but the more pleasing that it 
is the prelude announcing the general coming 
of the birds. 



CHAPTER FOURTH 

THE BUILDUP G OF THE 

j^Esr 

'T^HERE are probably very few children 
who are not more or less familiar 
with birds' nests, for they are not by any 
means confined to the country, but are to be 
found in the shade trees of every village 
street, to say nothing of the old-time lilac 
hedges, gooseberry bushes, and homely shrub- 
bery of fifty years ago. Even in our large 
cities there are some few birds brave enough 
to make their homes in or very near the 
busiest thoroughfares. As an instance, it 
was not so long ago that a yellow-breasted 
chat — a shy bird — nested in the yard of the 
Pennsylvania Hospital, at the corner of Eighth 
and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia, and soon 
learned to mimic many a familiar street sound. 
Such instances as these were more common 

83 



84 The Building of the Nest 

before the unfortunate blunder of introducing 
the English sparrow. But it is in the country 
only that we find boys really posted in the 
matter of nests, and I wish I could add that 
they always adopt the rules of ** hands 
off" when these nests come under their 
notice. It means far more mischief than 
most people think to disturb a nest, and so 
let every boy decide that he will not be 
guilty of such wanton cruelty. This, how- 
ever, does not shut off every boy and girl in 
the land from studying these nests, and a 
more delightful subjeft can never come under 
youthful investigation. 

What is a bird's nest ? Every one knows, 
after a fashion, and yet few have ever con- 
sidered how much that bunch of twigs, hol- 
low in a tree, or hole in the ground really 
means. Like so much that is familiar, we 
glance at it in a careless way and never stop 
to consider its full significance. Except in a 
very few instances, a bird's nest is never the 
result of a single individual's labor. Even 
if but one bird does all the work, there has 
previously been a decision reached by two 
birds as to where the nest shall be placed, and 
how much this means ! At once we are 



The Building of the Nest 85 

brought to consider that an interchange of 
thought has taken place. The pair have 
discussed, literally, the merits and drawbacks 
of the situation, and have had in mind not 
only their own safety, but that of their off- 
spring. The fa£l that they make mistakes 
at times proves this. Were this not the 
case, or if nests were placed hap-hazard in 
any tree or bush or anywhere on the ground, 
bird enemies would have a happy time for a 
short season, and then birds, like many of the 
world's huge beasts, would become extinft. 
On the contrary, birds have long since 
learned to be very careful, and their ingenu- 
ity in this apparently simple matter of choos- 
ing a nest site is really astonishing. This, 
too, has resulted in quickening their wits in 
all direftions, and the bird that is really a 
booby is scarcely to be found. 

Birds suffer at times from their misjudg- 
ment or over-confidence, and this, it must be 
added, refledls upon us. The instances are 
numberless where birds have quickly learned 
that certain people love them, and they lose 
all fear. Again, naturally very timid birds 
soon learn when they are free from persecu- 
tion. The writer frequently passes in the 



86 The Building of the Nest 

cars by a zoological garden on the bank of 
a river, and has been impressed with the 
abundant illustration of birds' intelligence to 
be noticed there. The crows have learned 
that fire-arms are not allowed to be used any- 
where near, and so they fearlessly hop about 
not only the enclosure of the garden, but the 
many tracks of the railroad just outside, 
showing no timidity even when the locomo- 
tives rush by. Stranger still, wild ducks 
gather in the river almost directly under the 
railroad bridge, and do not always dive out 
of sight as the trains pass by, and I have 
never seen them take wing, even when the 
whistle blew the quick, short, penetrating 
danger signal. 

To come back to their nests : birds have 
other enemies than man to guard against, and 
so are never in a hurry in the matter of deter- 
mining where to build. Time and again a loca- 
tion has been discovered to be unsuitable after 
a nest has been commenced, and the strufture 
abandoned. I have observed this many times. 
Indeed, my own curiosity has led the birds 
to move, they not quite approving my con- 
stant watching of what was going on. I well 
remember seating myself once in a shady 



The Building of the Nest 87 

nook to eat my lunch, and being almost 
attacked by a pair of black-and-white tree- 
creeping warblers. Their adlions were plainly 
a protest against my staying where I was, 
and on looking about, I found that I had 
almost sat upon their nest, which was then 
just completed, but contained no eggs. I 
visited the spot the next day and found a 
single egg ; but my coming was a mistake, 
for the birds now believed I had sinister de- 
signs, and abandoned their new-made home. 
The method of building, of course, varies 
as much as the patterns of nests. Even 
when the same materials are used, they are 
differently treated, and a nest of sticks only 
may in one case be merely thrown together, 
as it were, while in another they are so care- 
fully interlaced that the strudlure is a basket, 
and holds together if held by the rim only. 
Another, the same in general appearance, 
would immediately fall to pieces if similarly 
treated. A reason for this is discoverable in 
some cases, but not in all. If we examine a 
great many nests, the rule will hold good, I 
think, that where they are very loosely put to- 
gether, the locality is such that no natural dis- 
turbing causes, as high winds, are likely to 



88 The Building of the Nest 

bring disaster. Until I studied this point the 
occurrence of exceedingly frail nests was ever a 
matter of surprise, for it is to be remembered 
that the same species, as a cat-bird or cardinal 
red-bird, does not build after a uniform 
fashion, but adapts its work to the spot 
chosen for the nest. It would be very haz- 
ardous to say that a nest was built by this or 
that bird, unless the builder was seen in 
possession. 

So difficult is it to watch a pair of birds 
while building, that the method of their work- 
ing is largely to be guessed at from the work 
itself, but by means of a field-glass a good 
deal can be learned. It would appear as if 
a great many twigs were brought for the 
foundation of a nest, such as a cat-bird's or 
song-sparrow's, that were unsuitable. I have 
occasionally seen a twig tossed aside with a 
flirt of the head very suggestive of disap- 
pointment. The builders do not always 
carry with them a distinfl idea of what they 
want when hunting for material, and so labor 
more than would be necessary if a little wiser. 
Very funny disputes, too, often arise, and these 
are most frequent when wrens are finishing 
their huge strudlures in a box or some corner 



The Building of the Nest 89 

of an out-building. A feather, or a bit of 
thread, or a small rag will be carried in by 
one bird and tossed out by the other with a 
deal of scolding and *' loud words" that is 
positively startling. But when the frame- 
work of any ordinary open or cup-shaped 
nest is finally completed, the lining is not so 
difficult a matter. Soft or yielding materials 
are used that to a greater or less extent have 
a ** felting property," and by the bird's weight 
alone assume the shape desired. This is 
facilitated by the bird in two ways : the 
builder sits down, as if the eggs were already 
laid, and with its beak pushes the loose ma- 
terial between it and the framework, and 
tucks odd bits into any too open crevices. 
While doing this, it slowly moves around 
until it has described a complete circle. This 
brings to light any defefls in the outer struc- 
ture, and the bird can often be seen tugging 
away at some projefting end, or its mate, out- 
side of the nest, rearranging a twig here and 
there, while the other bird — shall I say ? — 
is giving direftions. 

Surprise has often been expressed that the 
common chipping sparrow can so neatly 
curl a long horse-hair into the lining of its 
8* 



go The Building of the Nest 

little nest. It cannot be explained, perhaps, 
but we have at least a clue to it. One end of 
the hair is snugly tucked in among stouter 
materials, and then, — I ask the question only, 
— as the bird coils it about the sides of the 
nest with its beak, does it break or dent it, or 
is there some chemical effect produced by 
the bird's saliva ? The hairs do not appear 
to be merely dry-curled, for in that case 
they would unroll when taken from the nest, 
and such as I have tried, when just placed in 
position, retained the coiled condition when 
removed. But old hair, curled by long ex- 
posure to the air and moisture, is often used, 
and this is far more tradable. When we 
come to examine woven nests, such as the 
Baltimore oriole and the red-eyed vireo, as 
well as some other small birds, build, there is 
offered a great deal more to study, for how 
they accomplish what they do, with their 
only tools their feet and beak, is not wholly 
known. That the tropical tailor-bird should 
run a thread through a leaf and so bring the 
edges together and make a conical-shaped bag, 
is not so very strange. It is little more than 
the piercing of the leaf and then putting the 
thread through the hole. This is ingenious 



The Building of the Nest 91 

but not wonderful, because not difficult ; but 
let us consider a Baltimore oriole and his 
nest. The latter is often suspended from a 
very slender elm or willow twig, and the bird 
has a hard time to hold on while at work. 
One experienced old oriole has for years built 
in the elm near my door, and occasionally I 
have caught a glimpse of him. I will not be 
positive, but believe that his first move is to 
find a good stout string, and this he ties to the 
twig. I use the word " tie" because I have 
found in many cases a capitally-tied knot, but 
how the bird, or birds, could accomplish 
this I cannot imagine. Both feet and beak, 
I suppose, are brought into play, but how ? 
To get some insight into the matter, I once 
tied a very long string to the end of a thread 
that the oriole had secured at one end and 
left dangling. This interference caused some 
commotion, but the bird was not outwitted. 
It caught the long string by its loose end and 
wrapped it over and over various twigs, and 
soon had a curious open-work bag that served 
its purpose admirably. The lining of soft, 
fluffy stuffs was soon added. This brought up 
the question as to whether the bird ever ties 
short pieces together and so makes a more 



92 The Building of the Nest 

secure cable that gives strength to the fin- 
ished nest. In examining nests, I have seen 
such knots as might have been tied by the 
birds, but there was no way to prove it. 
That they do wrap a string several times 
about a twig and then tie it, just as a boy ties 
his fishing-line to a pole, is certain. With 
my field-glass I have followed the bird far 
enough to be sure of this. When at work, 
the bird, from necessity, is in a reversed po- 
sition, — that is, tail up and head down. This 
has an obvious advantage, in that the builder 
can see what is going on beneath him, and 
shows, too, how near the ground the nest will 
come when finished ; but it sometimes hap- 
pens that he gets so absorbed in his work 
that a person can approach quite near, but I 
never knew him to become entangled in the 
loose ends that hang about him. 

The oriole at times offers us a wonder- 
ful example of ingenuity. It occasionally 
happens that too slight a twig is selefted, 
and when the nest is finished, or, later, when 
the young are nearly grown, the strufture 
hangs down too low for safety or sways too 
violently when the parent birds alight on it. 
This is a difficulty the bird has to contend with. 



The Building of the Nest 93 

and he has been known to remedy it by attach- 
ing a cord to the sustaining twigs and tying 
them to a higher limb of the tree, thus 
securing the necessary stability. 

A more familiar evidence of the intelligence 
of birds is when the vireos are disturbed by 
the presence of a cow-bird's egg in their 
nest. To get rid of it, they often build a 
new floor to the nest, and so leave the offend- 
ing egg to spoil. But there is displayed here 
an error of judgment that I am surprised to 
find. The birds that take this trouble cer- 
tainly could throw the egg out, and, I should 
think, preserve their own eggs, which in- 
variably are left to decay when a new struft- 
ure is reared above the old. I believe even 
three-storied vireos' nests have been found. 

There is one common swallow that is 
found well-nigh everywhere, which burrows 
into the sand ; and when we think of it, it 
seems strange that so aerial a bird should 
build so gloomy an abode for the nesting 
season. This bank swallow, as it is called, 
selefls a suitable bluff, facing water, and, 
with closed beak, turns round and round 
with its head to the ground, thus boring 
a hole big enough to crawl into. It turns 



94 The Building of the Nest 

into a gimlet for the time, and uses its beak 
as the point of the tool. This is odd work 
for a bird that almost lives in the air ; and 
then think, too, of sitting in a dark cave, 
sometimes six feet long, until the eggs are 
hatched. On the other hand, the barn swal- 
low makes a nest where there is plenty of 
light and air, and is a mason rather than a 
carpenter or miner. The mud he uses is 
not mere earth and water, but is made more 
adherent by a trace of secretion from the 
bird's mouth ; at least, my experiments lead 
me to think so. To build such a nest would 
be slow work did not the two birds work 
together and carry their little loads of mortar 
with great rapidity. They waste no time, 
and use only good materials, for I have 
noticed them, when building, go to a quite 
distant spot for the mud when a pool was 
diredlly outside of the barn in which they 
were building. To all appearance the nest 
is of sun-dried mud, but the material has cer- 
tainly undergone a kind of puddling first that 
makes it more adherent, bit to bit, and the 
whole to the rafter or side of the building. 
Again, these swallows have the knack of 
carrying a little water on the feathers of 



The Building of the Nest 95 

their breasts, I think, and give the structure 
a shower-like wetting from time to time. 
At last the strufture "sets" and is praftically 
permanent. 

There are birds that build no nests, like 
the kill-deer plover and the woodcock, and 
yet they exercise a faculty of equal value in-, 
telleftually ; for to be able to locate a spot 
that will be in the least degree exposed to 
danger is a power of no mean grade. The 
kill-deer will place its eggs on sloping ground, 
but somehow the heaviest dashes of rain do 
not wash out that particular spot. There 
are sand-pipers that lay their eggs on a bit 
of dead grass, just out of reach of the highest 
tides. As we look at such nests, we con- 
clude that the birds trust a great deal to good 
luck ; but, as a matter of fa6l, the destruftion 
of eggs when in no nests, or next to none, is 
very small. Why, on the other hand, wood 
peckers should go to such an infinity of trouble 
to whittle a nest in the firm tissue of a living 
tree, when a natural hollow would serve as 
well, is a problem past finding out. I have 
even seen a woodpecker make a new nest in 
a tree which already contained one in every 
respeft as good. 



g6 The Building of the Nest 

Going back to the fields and thickets, it 
will be seen that birds, as a rule, desire that 
their nests should be inconspicuous, and their 
efforts are always largely in this direftion in 
the construftion. The foliage of the tree or 
bush is considered, and when not direftly 
concealed by this, the nest is made to look 
marvellously like a natural produflion of the 
vegetable world, as the beautiful nest of our 
wood pee-wee or the humming-bird shows. 
These nests are then not merely the homes 
of young birds, but are places of defence 
against a host of enemies. The parent birds 
have no simple task set before them that can 
be gone through with mechanically year after 
year. Every season new problems arise, if 
their favorite haunts suffer change, and every 
year the birds prove equal to their solution. 



CHAPTER FIFTH 

CORJ^-SrJLK FIDDLES 

TT is a merit of our climate that at no time 
■*■ of the year are we, as children, shut out 
from healthy out-door pleasure. There are 
shady nooks along our creeks and rivers and 
delightful old mill-ponds wherein we may 
bathe in midsummer, and there are acres of 
glassy ice over which to skate in midwinter. 
Spring and autumn are too full of fun to par- 
ticularize, the average day being available for 
scores of methods whereby to make life a 
treasure beyond compare, spending it, to the 
mind of a boy, in that most rational way, 
having sport. I do not know why we always 
played marbles at one time of the year and 
flew our kites at another : this is for the 
folk-lore clubs to fathom. Suffice it, that 
there has been for centuries a time for every 
out-door amusement as fixed as the phases of 
the moon. So much for the sport common 
^ g 9 97 



98 Corn-stalk Fiddles 

to all boys. And now a word concerning an 
old-time musical instrument that may be now 
quite out of date, — the corn-stalk fiddle. 

This very primitive musical instrument is 
associated with the dreamy Indian-summer 
days of late November. Then it discoursed 
delicious music, but at other times it would 
have been " out of tune and harsh." Did the 
Indians give the secret to the children of our 
colonial forefathers ? It would be a pleasing 
thought whenever the toy comes to mind, as 
the mere suggestion is a pleasant fancy. 

The husking over, the corn-stalks carted 
and stored in a huge rick by the barn-yard, 
the apples gathered, the winter wood cut, and 
then the long quiet, with almost nothing to do. 
Such was the routine when I was a boy, and 
if the uncertain, dreamy days would only 
come, there was sure to be a short round of 
pleasure wherein the fiddle figured more 
prominently than all else. 

It was no small part of the fun to see Billy 
make a fiddle ; it was such a curious combi- 
nation of mummery and skill. Having whet- 
ted his keen, old-fashioned Barlow knife on 
the toe of his boot, he would flourish it above 
his head with a whoop as though he was 



Corn-stalk Fiddles 99 

looking for an enemy instead of a corn-stalk. 
Finding one that was glossy and long enough 
between the joints, he would press it gently 
between his lips, trying the several seftions, 
and then selefting the longest and most glossy 
one. So much of the proceeding was for our 
benefit, as the cunning old fellow well knew 
that it added to his importance in our eyes. 

What followed was skill. Having cut off 
the stalk above and below the ring-like joints, 
he had now a convenient piece about eight or 
ten inches in length. This he warmed by 
rubbing it violently with the palm of his 
hand, and then placing the point of the knife 
as near the joint as prafticable, he drew it 
quickly down to the next joint or lower end. 
It must be a straight incision, and Billy sel- 
dom failed to make it so. A parallel one 
was then made, not more than one-sixteenth 
of an inch distant. A space of twice this 
width was left, and two or three more strings 
were made in the same manner. These were 
freed of the pith adhering to their under sides, 
and held up by little wooden " bridges," one 
at each end. The bow was similarly fash- 
ioned, but was made of a more slender sedlion 
of corn-stalk and had but two strings. 



lOO Corn-stalk Fiddles 

It was indeed surprising how available this 
crude produftion proved as a musical instru- 
ment. Youth and the environment counted 
for a great deal, of course, and my Quaker 
surroundings forbidding music, it was a sweeter 
joy because a stolen one. 

I can pifture days of forty years ago as 
distinctly as though a matter of the present. 
My cousin and myself, with Black Billy, 
would often steal away and carry with us 
one of the smaller barn doors. This we 
would place in a sunny nook on the south 
side of the stalk-rick, and while the fiddle 
was being made, would part with our jackets 
that we might dance the better. Billy was 
soon ready, and with what a joyful grin, 
rolling of his huge black eyes, and vigorous 
contortion of the whole body would our 
faithful friend draw from the corn-stalk every 
note of many a quaint old tune ! And how 
we danced ! For many a year after the old 
door showed the nail-marks of our heavily- 
heeled shoes where we had brought them 
down with a vigor that often roused the energy 
of old Billy, until he, too, would stand up and 
execute a marvellous pas seul. Then, tired 
out, we would rest in niches in the stalk-rick. 



Corn-stalk Fiddles loi 

and Billy would play such familiar airs as had 
penetrated even into the quiet of Quaker- 
dom. It was no mere imitation of the music, 
but the thing itself; and it would be an hour 
or more before the fiddle's strings had lost 
their tension, the silicious covering had worn 
away, and the sweet sounds ceased. 

Almost the last of my November after- 
noons passed in this way had a somewhat 
dramatic ending. The fiddle was one of 
more than ordinary excellence. In the 
height of our fun I spied the brim of my 
grandfather's hat extending an inch or two 
around the corner. I gave no sign, but 
danced more vigorously than ever, and as 
the music and dancing became more fast and 
furious the crown of his stiff hat appeared, 
and then my grandfather's face. His coun- 
tenance was a study. Whether to give the 
alarm and run or to remain was the decision 
of an instant. I gave no sign, but kept one 
eye on him. ''Faster !" I cried to Billy, and, 
to my complete astonishment, the hat moved 
rapidly up and down. Grandfather was 
keeping time ! " Faster !" I cried again, and 
the music was now a shrieking medley, and 
the broad-brimmed hat vibrated wonderfully 
9* 



I02 Corn-stalk Fiddles 

fast. It was too much. I gave a wild yell 
and darted off. Circling the barn and stalk- 
rick, I entered the front yard with a flushed 
but innocent face, and met grandpa. He, 
too, had an innocent, far-away look, but his 
hat was resting on the back of his head and 
his cheeks were streaming with perspiration, 
and, best of all, he did not seem to know it. 

*' Grandpa," I asked at the supper-table 
that evening, "does thee know why it is that 
savage races are so given to dancing ?" 

" Charles," he replied, gravely, and noth- 
ing more was said. 



CHAPTER SIXTH 

THE OLD KirCHEJ^ DOOR 

'T'HE white porch, with its high roof and 
■■■ two severelj plain pillars to support it; 
the heavy door, with its ponderous knocker ; 
the straggling sweetbrier at one side ; the 
forlorn yellow rose between the parlor win- 
dows ; the grass that was too cold to wel- 
come a dandelion ; the low box hedge, and 
one huge box bush that never sheltered a 
bird's nest ; all these were in front to 
solemnly greet that terror of my early days, 
— company. 

To me these front-door features all meant, 
and still mean, restraint ; but how different 
the world that lingered about the old farm- 
house kitchen door ! There was no cold 
formality there, but freedom, — the healthy 
freedom of old clothes, an old hat ; ay, 
even the luxury of an open-throated shirt 
was allowed. 

103 



I04 The Old Kitchen Door 

After a tramp over the meadows, after a 
day's fishing, after the round of the rabbit- 
traps in winter, what joy to enter the kitchen 
door and breathe in the delegable odor of 
hot gingerbread ! There were appetites in 
those days. 

I do not understand the mechanism of a 
modern kitchen : it looks to me like a small 
machine-shop ; but the old farm kitchen was 
a simple affair, and the intricacies and mys- 
tery lay wholly in the dishes evolved. It 
is said of my grandmother that a whiff of 
her sponge-cake brought the humming-birds 
about. I do know there was a crackly crust 
upon it which it is useless now to try to imi- 
tate. 

But the door itself — we have none such 
now. It was a double door in two ways. 
It was made of narrow strips of oak, oblique 
on one side and straight on the other, and 
so studded with nails that the whole affair 
was almost half metal. It was cut in two, 
having an upper and a lower seftion. The 
huge wooden latch was hard and smooth as 
ivory. At night the door was fastened by 
a hickory bar, which, when I grew strong 
enough to lift it, was my favorite hobby-horse. 



The Old Kitchen Door 105 

The heavy oak sill was worn in the mid- 
dle until its upper surface was beautifully 
curved, and to keep the rain out, when the 
wind was south, a canvas sand-bag was rolled 
against it. A stormy-day amusement was to 
pull this away on the sly, and sail tiny paper 
boats in the puddle that soon formed on the 
kitchen floor. There was mischief in those 
days. 

Kitchens and food are of course insepara- 
bly conne£led, and what hunting-ground for 
boys equal to the closets where the cakes 
were kept ? I do not know that the matter 
was ever openly discussed, but as I look back 
it seems as if it was an understood thing 
that, when our cunning succeeded in outwit- 
ting auntie, we could help ourselves to jum- 
bles. Once I became a hero in this line of 
discovery, and we had a picnic behind the 
lilacs ; but, alas ! only too soon we were 
pleading for essence of peppermint. Over- 
eating is possible, even in our teens. 

Recent raids in modern kitchen precindls 
are never successful. Of late I always put 
my hand in the wrong crock, and find pickles 
where I sought preserves. I never fail, 
now, to take a slice of a reserved cake, or 



io6 The Old Kitchen Door 

to quarter the pie intended for the next 
meal. Age brings no experience in such 
matters. It is a case where we advance back- 
ward. 

Of the almost endless phases of life cen- 
tring about the kitchen door there is one 
which stands out so prominently that it is 
hard to realize the older aflor is now dead 
and that of the young on-lookers few are 
left. Soon after the dinner-horn was sounded 
the farm hands gathered at the pump, which 
stood just outside the door, and then in solemn 
procession filed into the kitchen for the noon- 
day meal. All this was prosy enough, but 
the hour's nooning after it, — then there was 
fun indeed. 

Scipio — " Zip," for short — was not ill- 
natured, but then who loves too much teas- 
ing? An old chestnut burr in the grass 
where he was apt to lie had made him sus- 
picious of me, and I had to be extra cautious. 
Once I nearly overstepped the mark. Zip 
had his own place for a quiet nap, and, when 
stretched upon the grass under the big linden, 
preferred not to be disturbed. Now it oc- 
curred to me to be very funny. I whittled 
a cork to the shape of a spider, added mon- 



The Old Kitchen Door 107 

strous legs, and with glue fastened a dense 
coating of chicken-down over all. 

It was a fearful spider. 

I suspended the sham inseft from a limb 
of the tree so that it would hang direftly over 
Zip's face as he lay on the ground, and by 
a black thread that could not be seen I could 
draw it up or let it down at pleasure. It 
was well out of sight when Zip fell asleep, 
and then I slowly low^ered the monster until 
it tickled his nose. It was promptly brushed 
aside. This was repeated several times, and 
then the old man awoke. The huge spider 
was just touching his nose, and one glance 
was enough. With a bound and a yell he was 
up and off, in his headlong flight overturn- 
ing the thoughtless cause of his terror. I 
was the more injured of the two, but never 
dared in after-years to ask Zip if he was 
afraid of spiders. 

And all these years the front door never 
changed. It may have been opened daily 
for aught I know, but I can remember noth- 
ing of its history. 

Stay ! As befitting such an occurrence, it 
was open once, as I remember, when there 
was a wedding at the house ; but of that 



io8 The Old Kitchen Door 

wedding I recall only the preparations in the 
kitchen for the feast that followed; and, 
alas ! it has been opened again and again for 
funerals. 

Why, indeed, should the front door be 
remembered ? It added no sunshine to the 
child's short summer ; but around the corner, 
whether dreary winter's storm or the fiercest 
heat of August fell upon it, the kitchen door 
was the entrance to a veritable elysium. 



CHAPTER SEVENTH 

UP THE CREEK 

' I 'HERE is greater merit in the little word 
" up" than in " down." If, when in 
a place new to me, I am asked to go ** up the 
creek," my heart leaps, but there is less en- 
thusiasm when it is suggested to go down the 
stream. One seems to mean going into the 
country, the other into the town. All this 
is illogical, of course, but what of that? 
The fadls of a case like this have not the 
value of my idle fancies. After all, there is 
a peculiar merit in going up-stream. It is 
something to be going deeper and deeper into 
the heart of the country. It is akin to get- 
ting at the foundations of things. 

In the case of small inland streams, gen- 
erally, the mouth is a commonplace affair. 
The features that charm shrink from the 
fateful spot, and we are put in a condition 
of anticipation at the start which, happily, 
lo 109 



no Up the Creek 

proves one of abundant realization at the 
finish. 

A certain midsummer Saturday was not 
an ideal one tor an outing, but with most ex- 
cellent company I ventured up the creek. It 
was my friend's suggestion, so I was free from 
responsibility. Having promised nothing, I 
could in no wise be justly held accountable. 
Vain thought ! Diredlly I suffered in their 
estimation because, at mere beck and nod, 
polliwogs were not forthcoming and fishes 
refused to swim into my hand. What strange 
things we fancy of our neighbors ! Because 
I love the wild life about me, one young 
friend thought me a magician who could 
command the whole creek's fauna by mere 
word of mouth. It proved an empty day 
in one respeft, animal life scarcely showing 
itself. To offer explanations was of no avail, 
and one of the little company recast her 
opinions. Perhaps she even entertains some 
doubt as to my having ever seen a bird or 
fish or the coveted polliwog. 

It is one thing to be able to give the name 
and touch upon the habits of some captured 
creature, and quite another to command its 
immediate presence when we enter its haunts. 



Up the Creek 1 1 1 

This always should, and probably never 
will, be remembered. 

But what of the creek, the one-time Big- 
Bird Creek of the Delaware Indians ? With 
ill-timed strokes we pulled our languid oars, 
and passed many a tree, jutting meadow, or 
abandoned wharf worthy of more than a 
moment's contemplation. But, lured by the 
treasure still beyond our reach, we went on 
and on, until the trickling waters of a hill- 
side spring proved too much for us, and, turn- 
ing our prow landward, we stopped to rest. 

Among old trees that afforded grateful 
shade, a spring that bubbled from an aged 
chestnut's wrinkled roots, a bit of babbling 
brook that too soon reached the creek and 
was lost, and, beyond all, wide-spreading 
meadows, boundless from our point of view 
— what more need one ask ? To our credit, 
be it said, we were satisfied, except, perhaps, 
that here, as all along our course, polliwogs 
were perverse. Birds, however, consider- 
ately came and went, and even the shy cuckoo 
deigned to reply when we imitated his dolo- 
rous clucking. A cardinal grosbeak, too, 
drew near and whistled a welcome, and once 
eyed us with much interest as we sat lunching 



112 Up the Creek 

on the grass. What did he think of us? Eat- 
ing, with him, is so diiFerent a matter, and per- 
haps he could give us a few useful hints. The 
trite remark, " Fingers came before forks," 
has a significance in the woods, if not in the 
town. While eating we listened, and I heard 
the voices of nine different birds. Some 
merely chirped in passing, it is true, but the 
marsh-wrens in the cat-tail thicket just across 
the creek were not silent for a moment. 
Here in the valley of the Delaware, as I re- 
cently found them on the shores of Chesa- 
peake Bay, the wrens are quite nofturnal, and 
I would have been glad to have heard them 
sing in the moonlight again ; for our enthu- 
siasm would have been strengthened by a few 
such glimpses of the night side of Nature. 

No bird is so welcome to a mid-day camp 
as the white-eyed vireo, and we were fortu- 
nate in having one with us while we tarried 
at the spring. Not even ninety degrees in 
the shade has any effedl upon him, and this 
unflagging energy readls upon the listener. 
We could at least be so far alive as to give 
him our attention. Mid-day heat, however, 
does affeft many a song-bird, and now that 
nesting is well-nigh over, the open woods 



Up the Creek 113 

are deserted for hidden cool retreats, where 
the songster takes its ease, as we, far from 
town, are taking ours. There is much in 
common between birds and men. 

How, as we lingered over our glasses, 
counting the lemon-seeds embedded in sugar, 
we would have enjoyed a wood-thrush's 
splendid song or a rose-breasted grosbeak's 
matchless melody ! but the to-whee of the 
pipilo scratching among dead leaves, the 
plaint of an inquisitive cat-bird threading 
the briers, the whir of a humming-bird 
vainly seeking flowers, — these did not pass 
for nothing ; and yet there was comparative 
silence that suggested a sleeping rather than 
a wakeful, aftive world. 

Here let me give him who loves an outing 
a useful hint : be not so anxious for what may 
be that you overlook that which is spread be- 
fore you. More than once to-day our dis- 
cussion of the " silence" of a midsummer 
noontide drowned the voices of singing-birds 
near by. 

How often it has been intimated to us that 
*' two's company and three's a crowd" ! but 
to really see and hear what transpires in the 
haunts of wild life, one is company and two's 



114 Up the Creek 

a crowd. We cannot heed Nature and fel- 
low-man at the same moment ; and as to the 
comparative value of their communications, 
each must judge for himself. 

Certainly the human voice is a sound which 
animals are slow to appreciate. How often 
have I stood in silence before birds and small 
animals and they have shown no fear ! A 
movement of my arms would put them on 
guard, perhaps ; but a word spoken, and away 
they sped. Not a bird, I have noticed, is 
startled by the bellow of a bull or the neigh 
of a horse, and yet my own voice filled them 
with fear. Even snakes that knew me well 
and paid no attention to my movements were 
startled at words loudly spoken. It is a bit 
humiliating to think that in the estimation of 
many a wild animal our bark is worse than 
our bite. 

A midsummer noontide has surely some 
merit, and when I failed to find fish, frog, or 
salamander for my young friend, it became 
necessary to point to some feature of the spot 
that made it worth a visit. To my discom- 
fiture, I could find nothing. Trees have been 
talked of overmuch, and there were no wild 
flowers. The August bloom gave, as yet, only 



Up the Creek 115 

a hint of what was coming. I had hit upon 
a most unlucky interim during which no man 
should go upon a picnic. In despair and 
empty-handed, we took to our boat and started 
up the creek. It was a fortunate move, for 
straightway the waters offered that which I 
had vainly sought for on shore. Here were 
flowers in abundance. The pickerel-weed 
was in bloom, the dull-yellow blossoms of the 
spatterdock dotted the muddy shores, bind- 
weed here and there offered a single flower as 
we passed by, and never was golden-dodder 
more luxuriant. Still, it is always a little dis- 
appointing when Flora has the world to her- 
self, and while we were afloat it was left to 
a few crows and a single heron to prove that 
she had not quite undisputed sway. 

Up the creek with many a turn and twist, 
and now on a grassy knoll we land again, 
where a wonderful spring pours a great 
volume of sparkling water into the creek. 
Here at last we have an objeft lesson that 
should bear fruit when we recall the day. 
Not a cupful of this clear cold water could 
we catch but contained a few grains of sand, 
and for so many centuries has this carrying of 
sand grains been in progress that now a great 



1 1 6 Up the Creek 

ridge has choked the channel where once 
rode ships at anchor. An obscure back- 
country creek now, but less than two cen- 
turies ago the scene of busy industry. Per- 
haps no one is now living who saw the last sail 
that whitened the landscape. Pages of old 
ledgers, a bit of diary, and old deeds tell us 
something of the place ; but the grassy knoll 
itself gives no hint of the faft that upon it 
once stood a warehouse. Yet a busy place it 
was in early colonial times, and now utterly 
neglefted. 

It is difficult to realize how very unsub- 
stantial is much of man's work. As we sat 
upon the grassy slope, watching the out- 
going tide as it rippled and broke in a long 
line of sparkling bubbles, I rebuilt, for the 
moment, the projefting wharf, of which but 
a single log remains, and had the quaint 
shallops of pre-Revolutionary time riding at 
anchor. There were heard, in fadl, the cry 
of a heron and the wild scream of a hawk ; 
but these, in fancy, were the hum of human 
voices and the tramp of busy feet. 

The scattered stones that just peeped above 
the grass were not chance bowlders rolled 
from the hill near by, but the door-step and 



Up the Creek 117 

foundation of the one-time warehouse. The 
days of buying, selling, and getting gain came 
back, in fancy, and I was more the sturdy 
colonist than the effeminate descendant. But 
has the present no merit ? We had the 
summer breeze that came freighted with the 
odors gathered from the forest and the stream, 
and there were thrushes rejoicing in our hear- 
ing that the hill-sides were again as Nature 
made them. It meant much to us to tarry 
in the shade of venerable trees spared by 
the merchants that once collected here, 
whose names are now utterly forgotten. 
Stay ! there are two reminders of ancient 
glory. A beech that overhangs the brook 
has its bark well scarred, and, now beyond 
decipherment, there are initials of many 
prominent naturalists of Philadelphia. A 
few rods up-stream is another beech that has 
remained unchanged. On it can be seen the 
initials T. A. C, 1819; those of the cele- 
brated paleontologist, Conrad, born near here 
in 1803. 

The shadows lengthen ; the cooler hours 
of eventide draw on ; the languid thrushes 
are again abroad ; music fills the air. We are 
homeward bound and hurrying down-stream. 



1 1 8 Up the Creek 

Our minds are not so receptive as when we 
started. How shrunken to a few rods is 
every mile ! Trees, flowers, and birds are 
scarcely heeded ; but the good gathered as 
we went up the creek we bring away, and, 
once again in the dusty village street, we 
realize that we have but to turn our back 
upon the town to find the world a pifture. 



CHAPTER EIGHTH 

A tVIN'TER-NIGHrs 
OUTING 

■^/TOT long since I was asked — and not 
■^^ for the first time — if I could date the 
beginning of my taste for natural history pur- 
suits or give any incident that appeared to 
mark a turning-point in my career. 

It did not seem possible to do this, on first 
consideration ; but a recent living over of days 
gone by recalled an incident which happened 
before I was eleven years old, and, as it was 
almost my first regular outing that smacked of 
adventure, it is probable that it impressed me 
more forcibly than any earlier or, indeed, later 
events. 

Heavy and long-continued rains had re- 
sulted in a freshet, and then three bitter cold 
days had converted a wide reach of mead- 
ows into a frozen lake. Happier conditions 

119 



I20 A Winter-Night's Outing 

could not have occurred in the small boy's 
estimation, and, with boundless anticipation, 
we went skating. 

After smooth ice, the foremost requirement 
is abundant room, and this we had. There 
was more than a square mile for each of us. 
The day had been perfeft and the approach- 
ing night was such as Lowell so aptly de- 
scribes, "all silence and all glisten." 

As the sun was setting we started a roar- 
ing fire in a sheltered nook, and securely 
fastening our skates without getting at all 
chilled, started off. Then the fun com- 
menced. We often wandered more than a 
mile away, and it was not until the fire was 
reduced to a bed of glowing coals that we 
returned to our starting-point. 

Here a great surprise awaited us. The 
heat had drawn from the wooded hill-side 
near by many a meadow-mouse that, moved by 
the warmth or by curiosity, ventured as near 
as it dared. These mice were equally sur- 
prised at seeing us, and scampered off, but, it 
seemed to me, with some show of reluflance, 
as if a chance to warm themselves so thor- 
oughly should not be missed. 

We freshened the fire a little and fell back 



A Winter-Night's Outing 121 

a few paces, but stood near enough to see if 
the mice would return. This they did in a 
few minutes, and, to our unbounded surprise 
and amusement, more than one sat up on its 
haunches like a squirrel. They seemed to 
be so many diminutive human beings about a 
camp-fire. 

It was a sight to give rise to a pretty fairy 
tale, and possibly our Indians built up theirs 
on just such incidents. These mice were, to 
all appearances, there to enjoy the warmth. 
There was little running to and fro, no squeak- 
ing, not a trace of unusual excitement, and, 
although it was so cold, we agreed to wait 
as long as the mice saw fit to stay. 

This resolution, however, could not hold. 
We were getting chilled, and so had to draw 
near. As we did this, there was a faint 
squeaking which all noticed, and we concluded 
that sentinels had been placed to warn the 
congregated mice of our approach. 

The spirit of adventure was now upon us, 
and our skates were but the means to other 
ends than mere sport. What, we thought, 
of the gloomy nooks and corners where 
thickets stood well above the ice ? We had 
shunned these heretofore, but without open 



122 A Winter-Night's Outing 

admission that we had any fear concerning 
them. Then, too, the gloomy gullies in the 
hill-side came to mind. Should we skate 
into such darkness and startle the wild life 
there ? 

The suggestion was made, and not one 
dared say he was afraid. 

We thought of the fun in chasing a coon 
or skunk over the ice, and bravely we ven- 
tured, feeling our way where we knew the 
ice was thin and rough. 

At a bend in the little brook, where a large 
cedar made the spot more dark and forbidding, 
we paused a moment, not knowing just how 
to proceed. 

The next minute we had no time for 
thought. A loud scream held us almost spell- 
bound, and then, with one dash, we sought 
the open meadows. 

Once there, we breathed a little freer. 
We could see the fast-fading light of the 
fire, and at last could flee in a known direc- 
tion if pursued. Should we hurry home ? 
We debated this for some time, but were 
more fearful of being laughed at than of 
facing any real danger, and therefore con- 
cluded, with proper caution, to return. 



A Winter-Night's Outing 123 

Keeping close together, we entered the 
ravine again, stopped near the entrance and 
kindled a fire, and then, by its light, pro- 
ceeded farther. It was a familiar spot, but 
not without strange features as we now 
saw it. 

Again we were startled by the same wild 
cry, but for a moment only. A barn owl, I 
think it was, sailed by, glaring at us, as we 
imagined, and sought the open meadows. 

We turned and followed, though why, it 
would be hard to say. The owl flew slowly 
and we skated furiously, trying to keep it di- 
reftly overhead. Now we were brave even 
to foolhardiness, and sped away over the ice, 
indifferent to the direftion taken. To this 
day I have credited that owl with a keen sense 
of humor. 

On we went, over the meadows to where 
the swift but shallow creek flowed by, 
and then, when too late, we knew where 
we were. The ice bent beneath us, then 
cracked, and in an instant we were through 
it, our feet well in the mud and the water 
about our necks. Just how we got out I 
never knew, but we did, and the one dry 
match among us was a veritable treasure. 



124 A Winter-Night's Outing 

It did not go out at the critical moment, but 
started ablaze the few twigs we hastily 
gathered, and so saved us from freezing. As 
we dried our clothes and warmed our be- 
numbed bodies, I, for one, vowed never 
again to chase an owl on skates, but to go at 
it more soberly. From that eventful night 
the country has been attraftive by reason of 
its wild life. It was there I became — if 
indeed I ever have become — a naturalist. 



CHAPTER NINTH 

IFILD LIFE IN JVA^ER 

" 'T'HE antelope has less reason to fear the 
■*" lion than has the minnow to dread 
the pike. We think of timid antelopes and 
roaring lions, but the former has good use of 
its limb-s, and so a fighting chance for its life; 
but the minnows have little advantage in the 
struggle for existence, and none at all when 
the predatory fishes are in pursuit of them." 

This was written in a note-book more than 
thirty years ago, and I let it stand as evidence 
of how easy it is to be in error in matters of 
natural history. 

When I went to school there was but one 
teacher of the five that knew anything about 
such matters, and he had the old-time views. 
Then a fish was a mere machine so far as in- 
telligence was concerned. We were told of 
the cunning of foxes and the instinft of ants 
and bees, but never a word of fishes. 
11* 125 



126 Wild Life in Water 

The truth is, I might very properly speak 
of wild " wit" in the water instead of " life," 
for there can be not the shadow of a doubt 
but that many of our fishes are really cunning. 
We need but watch them carefully to be 
readily convinced of this. How else could 
they escape danger ? 

The pretty peacock minnows throng the 
grassy beach at high tide, playing with their 
fellows in water just deep enough to cover 
them, and are, when here, very tame and 
careless. They even get stranded upon the 
airy side of floating leaves, and enjoy the ex- 
citement. They realize, it would seem, that 
where they are no pike can rush down upon 
them, no snake work its way unseen among 
them, no turtle crawl into their playground ; 
but as the tide goes out and these minnows 
are forced nearer to the river's channel, they 
lose their carelessness and are suspicious of 
all about them. 

To call this instinftive fear and result of 
heredity sounds well ; but the naturalist is 
brought nearer to the wild life about him 
when he credits them simply with common 
sense. The charm of watching such " small 
deer" vanishes if we lean too much on the 



Wild Life in Water 127 

learned and scientific solutions of the com- 
parative psychologist, and possibly, too, we 
wander further from the truth. All I posi- 
tively know is, that when danger really exists 
the minnows are aware of it ; when it is ab- 
sent they throw off the burden of this care, 
and life for a few hours is a matter of pure 
enjoyment. 

Brief mention should be made of the pro- 
tedlive charafter of the coloring of certain 
fishes. If such are fortunate enough to be 
proteftively colored, there is little to be said ; 
but are they conscious of this ? Does a fish 
that is green or mottled green and gray keep 
closely to the weeds, knowing that it is safer 
there than when in open water or where the 
bottom is covered with white sand and peb- 
bles ? This may be a rather startling question, 
but there is warrant for the asking. Float 
half a day over the shallows of any broad 
pond or stream, study with care and without 
preconception the fishes where they live, and 
you will ask yourself not only this question, 
but many a stranger one. If fish are fools, 
how is it that the angler has so generally to 
tax his ingenuity to outwit them ? How closely 
Nature must be copied to deceive a trout ! 



128 Wild Life in Water 

Having said so much of small fishes, what 
now of the larger ones that prey upon them ? 
A pike, for instance ? Probably many more 
people have studied how to catch a pike than 
have considered it scientifically. It is tire- 
some, perhaps, but if a student of natural his- 
tory really desires to know what a fish aftually 
is, he must watch it for hours, being himself 
unseen. 

At one time there were several large pike 
in my lotus pond. Under the huge floating 
leaves of this splendid plant they took refuge, 
and it was difficult to catch even a glimpse 
of them. At the same time the schools of 
minnows seemed to enjoy the sunlight and 
sported in the open water. More than once, 
however, I saw a pike rush out from its 
cover, and finally learned that it systematically 
lay in wait for the minnows ; and I believe 
I am justified in adding that the minnows 
knew that danger lurked under the lotus 
leaves. 

The situation was not so hap-hazard a one 
as might appear at first glance, and hours of 
patient watching convinced me that there was 
a decided exercising of ingenuity on the part 
of both the pike and the minnows ; the for- 



Wild Life in Water 129 

mer ever on the lookout for a viftim, the 
latter watchful of an ever-present danger. 
Day long it was a tragedy where brute force 
counted for little and cunning for a great 
deal. 

Another very common fish in my pond 
was likewise very suggestive in connexion 
with the subjedl of animal intelligence. I 
refer to the common " sunny," or "pumpkin- 
seed." A shallow sand-nest had been scooped 
near shore and the precious eggs deposited. 
A school of silvery-finned minnows had dis- 
covered them, and the parent fish was severely 
taxed in her efforts to proteft them. 

So long as this school of minnows re- 
mained together, the sunfish, by fierce rushes, 
kept them back ; but soon the former — was 
it accident or design ? — divided their forces, 
and as the parent fish darted at one assaulting 
party, the other behind it made a successful 
raid upon the nest. This continued for some 
time, and the sunfish was getting quite weary, 
when, as if a sudden thought struck it, its 
taftics changed, and it swam round and round 
in a circle and sent a shower of sand out into 
the space beyond the nest. This effedlually 
dazed the minnows. 



130 Wild Life in Water 

Little incidents like this are forever oc- 
curring and efFeftually set aside the once 
prevalent idea that fish are mere living ma- 
chines. Look a pike in the eye and you 
will deteft something very different from 
mere instinftive timidity. 

But fish are not the only creatures that live 
in the water ; there are one snake and several 
species of turtles, and frogs, mollusks, and 
insefts innumerable. These are too apt to 
be associated with the land, and, except the 
two latter forms, are usually thought of as 
taking to the water as a place of refuge, but 
really living in the open air. This is a great 
mistake. There is a lively world beneath 
the surface of the water, and the tragedy of 
life is played to the very end, with here and 
there a pretty comedy that wards off the 
blues when we look too long and see nothing 
but the destruftion of one creature that an- 
other may live. 

Here is an example of cunning or wit in a 
water-snake. A friend of mine was recently 
sitting on the bank of a little brook, when 
his attention was called to a commotion 
almost at his feet. Looking down, he saw a 
snake holding its head above the water, and 



Wild Life in Water 131 

in its mouth struggled a small sunfish. Now, 
what was the snake's purpose ? It knew very 
well that the fish would drown in the air, and 
not until it was dead could it be swallowed 
with that deliberation a snake loves. The 
creature was cunning enough to kill by easy 
means prey that would otherwise be diffi- 
cult to overcome, for while crosswise in the 
snake's mouth it could not be swallowed, 
and if put down for an instant the chances 
of its recapture would be slight. 

To suppose that a turtle, as you watch it 
crawling over the mud, has any sense of 
humor in its horny head seems absurd ; yet 
naturalists have recorded their being seen at 
play, and certainly they can readily be tamed 
to a remarkable degree. Their intelligence, 
however, shows prominently only in the 
degree of cunning exhibited when they are 
in search of food. The huge snapper " lies 
in wait," and truly this is a most sugges- 
tive and comprehensive phrase. I believe, 
too, that this fierce turtle buries surplus food, 
and so gives further evidence of intelleftual 
adlivity. 

To realize what wild life in the water 
really is it must be observed where Nature 



IJ2 Wild Life in Water 

has placed it. It is perhaps not so much set 
forth by exceptional incidents that the student 
happens to witness as by that general appear- 
ance of common sense which is so unmistaka- 
bly stamped upon even the most common- 
place movements. Writers upon animal 
intelligence do not need to be constantly on 
the lookout for special exhibitions of cunning 
in order to substantiate the claims they make 
in favor of life's lower forms. It is plainly 
enough to be seen if we will but patiently 
watch whensoever these creatures come and 
wheresoever they go and the manner of their 
going and coming. 

Do not be so intent upon watching for the 
marvellous that ordinary incidents are not 
seen. In studying wild life everywhere, 
and perhaps more particularly in the water, 
to be rightly informed we must see the aver- 
age individual amid commonplace surround- 
ings. Doing this, we are not misinformed 
nor led to form too high an opinion. It is 
as in the study of humanity. We must not 
familiarize ourselves with the mountebank, 
but with man. 



CHAPTER TENTH 

AN OLD-FASHIONED 
GARDEN 

' I "'HE world at large is a most intricate 
■^ machine, and parts viewed separately 
give no hint of their importance to what 
appear quite independent objects. Man may 
dissociate without destroying, but, when he 
does so, his constant attention must then take 
the place of the afts that Nature designed 
other conditions of life should perform. 
The isolated plant, for instance, is destroyed 
by insefts unless we proteft it by a glass 
covering or a poison-bath : Nature gave it to 
the birds to proteft the plant, and in so 
doing find food for themselves. This law 
of interdependence is made very plain in the 
case of a modern garden or the trim lawns 
of a large city, and in less degree applies 
to towns and villages. The caterpillar 

12 133 



134 An Old-fashioned Garden 

nuisance that requires the collaring of shade- 
trees with cotton-wool to proteft their foli- 
age illustrates this ; and what an example is 
a modern garden filled to overflowing with 
exotic plants ! An all-important feature is 
wanting, — birds ; for, except English spar- 
rows, we have none, and these are worse 
than useless. 

It was not always so, and the cause of the 
deplorable change is not hard to find. When- 
ever we chance, in our wanderings, to come 
upon some long-negledted corner of colonial 
times, there we will find the bloom and birds 
together. I have said " neglefled ;" not 
quite that, for there was bloom, and the 
birds are excellent gardeners. 

Let me particularize. My garden is a 
commonplace affair, with the single innova- 
tion of a tub sunk in the ground to accom- 
modate a lotus, — so comrrtonplace, indeed, 
that no passer-by would notice it ; and yet 
during a single summer afternoon I have 
seen within its boundaries fifteen species of 
birds. At that hottest hour of the midsum- 
mer day, two p.m., while looking at the 
huge pink blossoms of the classic lotus, my 
attention was called to a quick movement 



An Old-fashioned Garden 135 

on the ground, as if a rat ran by. It proved 
to be an oven-bird, that curious combination 
of thrush and sand-piper, and yet neither, 
but a true warbler. It peered into every 
nook and corner of the shrubbery, poised on 
the edge of the sunken lotus-tub, caught a 
wriggling worm that came to the surface of 
the water, then teetered along the fence and 
was gone. Soon it returned, and came and 
went until dark, as much at home as ever in 
the deep recesses of unfrequented woods. 
As the sun went down, the bird sang once 
with all the spring-tide ardor, and brought 
swiftly back to me many a long summer's 
day ramble in the country. It is something 
to be miles away from home while sitting on 
your own door-step. 

Twice a song-sparrow came, bathed in 
the lotus-tub, and, when not foraging in the 
weedy corners, sang its old-fashioned song, 
now so seldom heard within town limits. 
The bird gave me two valuable hints as to 
garden management. Water is a necessity 
to birds as well as to any other form of life, 
and shelter is something more than a mere 
attraftion. Was it not because the birds 
happened to be provided with them to-day 



136 An Old-fashioned Garden 

'that I had, as I have had the summer long, 
more birds than my neighbors ? 

How seldom do we see the coral honey- 
suckle, and how generally the trumpet-creeper 
has given place to exotic vines of far more 
striking bloom, but, as will appear, of less 
utility ! If the old-time vines that I have 
mentioned bore less showy flowers, they had 
at least the merit of attrafting humming- 
birds, that so grandly rounded out our com- 
plement of summer birds. These feathered 
fairies are not difficult to see, even though so 
small, and, if so inclined, we can always 
study them to great advantage. They be- 
come quite tame, and in the old-fashioned 
gardens were always a prominent feature by 
reason of their numbers. They are not 
forever on the wing, and when preening 
their feathers let the sunshine fall upon them, 
and we have emeralds and rubies that cost 
nothing, but are none the less valuable be- 
cause of this. In changing the botanical 
features of our yards we have had but one 
thought, gorgeous flowers ; but was it wise 
to give no heed to the loss of birds as the 
result ? I fancy there are many who would 
turn with delight from formal clusters of 



An Old-fashioned Garden 137 

unfamiliar shrubs, however showy, to a 
gooseberry hedge or a lilac thicket with 
song-sparrows and a cat-bird hidden in its 
shade. We have been unwise in this too 
radical change. We have abolished bird- 
music in our eagerness for color, gaining a 
little, but losing more. We have paid too 
dear, not for a whistle, but for its loss. But 
it is not too late. Carry a little of the home 
forest to our yards, and birds will follow it. 
And let me here wander to an allied matter, 
that of the recently-established Arbor Day. 
What I have just said recalls it. 

To merely transplant a tree, move it from 
one spot to another, where perhaps it is less 
likely to remain for any length of time than 
where it previously stood, is, it seems to me, 
the very acme of folly. The chances are 
many that the soil is less suitable, and so 
growth will be retarded, and the world is 
therefore not one whit the better off. There 
is far too much tree-planting of this kind 
on Arbor Day. In many an instance a plot 
of ground has been replanted year after 
year. I fancy we will have to reach more 
nearly to the stage of tree appreciation before 
Arbor Day will be a pre-eminent success. 
12* 



138 An Old-fashioned Garden 

Can we not, indeed, accommodate ourselves 
a little more to the trees growing where Na- 
ture planted them ? I know a village well, 
where the houses are placed to accommodate 
the trees that stood there when the spot was 
a wilderness. The main street is a little 
crooked, but what a noble street it is ! I 
recall, as I write these lines, many a Friends' 
meeting-house, and one country school, 
where splendid oaks are standing near by, 
and to those who gather daily or weekly 
here, whether children or grown people, 
the trees are no less dear than the buildings 
beside them. The wanderer who revisits 
the scenes of his childhood looks first at the 
trees and then at the houses. Tree-wor- 
ship, we are told, was once very prevalent, 
and it is not to be regretted that in a modi- 
fied form it still remains with us. 

As a praftical matter, let me here throw 
out the suggestion that he will be doing most 
excellent work who saves a tree each year. 
This is a celebration that needs no special 
day set forth by legislative enaftment. How 
often I have heard farmers remark, ** It was 
a mistake to cut those trees down" ! Of course 
it was. In nine cases out of ten the value 



An Old-fashioned Garden 139 

of the trees felled proves less than was ex- 
pefted, and quickly follows the realization of 
the fadl that when standing their full value 
was not appreciated. Think of cutting down 
trees that stand singly or in little groups in 
the middle of fields because it is a trouble to 
plant around them, or for the reason that 
they shade the crops too much ! What of 
the crop of comfort such trees yield to both 
man and beast when these fields are past- 
ures ? " But there is no money in shade- 
trees." I cannot repress my disgust when 
I hear this, and I have heard it often. Is 
there genuine manhood in those who feel 
this way towards the one great ornament of 
our landscape ? 

It is not — more's the pity — within the 
power of every one to plant a tree, but those 
who cannot need not stand idly by on Arbor 
Day. Here is an instance where half a loaf 
is better than no bread. Many a one can 
plant a shrub. How often there is an un- 
sightly corner, even in the smallest enclosure, 
where a tall tree would be a serious obstruc- 
tion, whereon can be grown a thrifty bush, 
one that will be a constant source of pleasure 
because of its symmetry and bright foliage. 



140 An Old-fashioned Garden 

and for a time doubly attraftive because of 
its splendid blossoming ! We know too little 
of the many beautiful flowering shrubs that 
are scattered through every woodland, which 
are greatly improved by a little care in culti- 
vation, and which will bear transplanting. 
We overlook them often, when seen grow- 
ing in the forest, because they are small, 
irregular, and often sparse of bloom. But 
remember, in the woods there is a fierce 
struggle for existence, and when this is over- 
come the full beauty of the shrub's stature 
becomes an accomplished faft. 

Here is a short list of common shrubs, 
every one of which is hardy, beautiful in 
itself, and can be had without other cost or 
labor than a walk in the country, for I do 
not suppose any land-owner would refuse a 
"weed," as they generally call these humble 
plants. The spicewood {Lindera benzoifi), 
which bears bright golden flowers before the 
leaves appear ; the shad-bush {Amelanchier 
canadensis^, with a wealth of snowy blossoms, 
which are increased in number and size by a 
little attention, as judicious trimming ; and 
the " bush" of the wild-wood can be made 
to grow to a beautiful miniature tree. The 



An Old-fashioned Garden 141 

well-known pinxter flower (^Azalea nudi- 
caule) is improved by cultivation, and can be 
made to grow " stocky" and thick-set, in- 
stead of scragged, as we usually find it. Its 
bright pink blossoms make a grand show- 
ing in May. There is a little wild plum 
{Pru7ius spmosd) which only asks to be 
given a chance and then will rival the famous 
deutzias in profusion of bloom, and after- 
wards remains a sturdy tree-like shrub, with 
dark-green foliage that is always attraftive. 
This, too, blooms before the foliage is de- 
veloped, and hints of spring as surely as the 
robin's song. A larger but no less handsome 
bush is the white flowering thorn {Cratagus 
crus-gallt), and there are wild spireas that 
should not be overlooked, and two white flow- 
ering shrubs that delight all who see them in 
bloom, the deer-berry {Vaccinium stamineum)y 
and the " false-teeth" {Leucothoe racemosa). 
All these are spring flowers. And now a 
word about an August bloomer, the sweet 
pepper -bush (^Clethra alnifolid). This is 
easily grown and is a charming plant. 

It happens, too, that a place can be found 
for a hardy climber, and as beautiful as the 
coral honeysuckles of our grandmother's days 



142 An Old-fashioned Garden 

is the climbing bittersweet {Celastrus scan- 
dens). The plant itself is attradlive. Its 
vigorous growth soon covers the support 
provided for it, and in autumn and through- 
out the winter its golden and crimson fruit 
hangs in thick-set clusters upon every branch. 

Considering how frequently near the house 
there are unsightly objefts, and how depress- 
ing it is to be forever looking upon ugliness, 
it is strange that the abundant means for 
beautifying waste places are so persistently 
neglefted. With one or more of the plants 
I have named, an eyesore may be changed to 
a source of pleasure, and it was Beecher, I 
think, who said, " A piece of color is as use- 
ful as a piece of bread." He never spoke 
more truly. 

And what of the old-time arbors, with the 
straggling grape-vine, and perhaps a rude 
wren-box perched at the entrance ? Is there 
better shade than the grape-vine offers, a 
sweeter odor than its bloom affords, or more 
charming music than the song of the restless 
house-wren ? Certainly there have been no 
improvements upon these features of the old- 
time garden : yet how seldom do we see 
them now ! We must travel far, too, to 



An Old-fashioned Garden 143 

find a martin -box. As a matter of faft, 
the bluebird, wren, and martin might, if we 
chose, be restored to the very hearts of our 
largest towns. People have no more terror 
for them than for the English sparrow, and 
they can all hold out against these piratical 
aliens, if we would consider their few and 
simple needs. The wrens need but nesting- 
boxes with an entrance through which the 
shoulders of a sparrow cannot pass ; and the 
bluebirds and martins require only that their 
houses be closed during the winter and very 
early spring, or until they have returned from 
their winter-quarters. This is easily done, 
and when the birds are ready to occupy the 
accommodations provided for them they will 
take possession and successfully hold the forts 
against all intruders. This is not a fancy 
merely, suggested as the basis of experimen- 
tation, but is the result of the experience 
of several people in widely-separated locali- 
ties. I vividly recall visiting at a house in a 
large town, where purple martins for more 
than fifty years had occupied boxes placed 
upon the eaves of a one-story kitchen. 

While stress is laid upon the importance 
of regaining the presence in town of these 



144 An Old-fashioned Garden 

birds, it must not be supposed that they are 
all that are available. There are scores of 
wild birds, known only to the ornithologist, 
that can be " cultivated" as readily as the 
wild shrubbery that under startling names 
figures in many a florist's catalogue. Give 
them a foothold, and they will come to stay. 
Orioles, -thrushes, vireos, fly-catchers, are 
not unreasonably afraid of man, and would 
quickly acquire confidence if they were war- 
ranted in so doing. How long would a 
scarlet tanager or a cardinal grosbeak remain 
unmolested if it appeared in any city street ? 
Here is the whole matter in a nutshell : the 
birds are not averse to coming, but the people 
will not let them. This is the more strange, 
when we remember that hundreds of dollars 
were spent to accommodate the pestiferous 
imported sparrow, that is and always must 
be a positive curse. Hundreds for sparrows, 
and not one cent for a bluebird ! While the 
mischief can never be undone, it can be held 
in check, if we will but take the trouble, 
and this is a mere matter of town-garden 
rearrangement ; and why, indeed, not treat 
our ears to music as well as our eyes to color 
and our palates to sweetness ? Plant here 



An Old-fashioned Garden 145 

and there a bush that will yield you a crop 
of birds. That this may not be thought 
merely a whim of my own, let me quote from 
the weather record of Dr. John Conrad, who 
for forty years was the apothecary of the 
Pennsylvania Hospital, in Philadelphia. This 
institution, bear in mind, is in the heart of 
the city, not in its outskirts. Under date of 
March 23, 1862, he records, "Crocus and 
snow-drop came into bloom last week and 
are now fully out." Again, he says, " Orioles 
arrived on April 8, after the fruit-trees burst 
into bloom." Here we have a migratory 
bird in the city three weeks earlier than its 
usual appearance in the country, but I do not 
think the dodlor was mistaken. I have posi- 
tive knowledge of the faft that he was a good 
local ornithologist. Under date of June, 
1 866, Conrad writes, " A very pleasant June. 
Fine bright weather, and only one week too 
warm for comfort. The roses bloomed well 
(except the moss-rose) and for the most part 
opened better than usual. The garden full 
of birds, and insefts less abundant than usual. 
Many blackbirds reared their young in our 
trees, and as many as sixteen or twenty have 
been counted on the lawn at one time. Cat- 
G ^ 13 



146 An Old-fashioned Garden 

birds, orioles, thrushes, wrens, vireos, robins, 
etc., abound and make our old hospital joyous 
with their sweet songs." 

During the summer of 1892 I was twice 
in the hospital grounds, with which I was 
very familiar during my uncle's — Dr. Con- 
rad's — lifetime, and I heard only English 
sparrows, although I saw two or three native 
birds. It was a sad change. Think of 
being able to speak of your garden as ** full 
of birds," — as ** joyous with their sweet 
songs." This, not long ago, could truthfully 
be done. Will it ever be possible to do so 
again ? 



CHAPTER ELEVENTH 

AN INDIAJ^ TRAIL 

TT was a strange coincidence. A farmer 
living near by employed an Indian from 
the school at Carlisle, and now that the work 
of the summer was over, this taciturn youth 
walked daily over a hill to a school-house 
more than a mile away, and the path leading 
to it was an Indian trail. 

Not long since I met the lad on this very 
path returning from school, and when he 
passed I stood by an old oak and watched 
him until lost among the trees, walking where 
centuries ago his people had walked when 
going from the mountain village and rock 
shelters along an inland creek to the distant 
town by the river. 

As you looked about from the old oak there 
was no public road orhouse in sight; nothing 
but trees and bushes, huge rocks, and one 
curious jutting ledge that tradition holds is a 

147 



148 An Indian Trail 

veritable relic of prehistoric time, — a place 
where council fires were lit and midnight 
meetings held. 

Whether tradition is true or not, the place 
was a fitting one whereat to tarry and fall 
a-thinking. Happy, indeed, could the old 
oak have spoken. 

Many a public road of recent date has been 
built on the line of an old trail, as many 
a town and even city have replaced Indian 
villages; but take the long-settled, regions 
generally, the ancient landmarks are all gone, 
and a stray potsherd or flint arrow-point in 
the fields is all that is left to recall the days 
of the dusky aborigines. 

Only in the rough, rocky, irreclaimable 
hills are we likely now to be successful, if 
such traces as a trail are sought for. 

It was so here. Bald-top Hill is of little 
use to the white man except for the firewood 
that grows upon its sides and the scattered 
game that still linger in its thickets. As 
seen from the nearest road, not far off, there 
is nothing now to suggest that an Indian ever 
clambered about it. The undergrowth hides 
every trace of the surface ; but after the leaves 
drop and a light snov/ has fallen, a curious 



An Indian Trail 149 

white line can be traced from the base of 
the summit ; this is the old trail. 

It is a narrow path, but for so long a 
time had it been used by the Indians that, 
when once pointed out, it can still be fol- 
lowed without difficulty. It leads now from 
one little intervale to another : from farmer 
A to farmer B ; but originally it was part 
of their long highway leading from Phila- 
delphia to Easton, perhaps. It matters not. 
Enough to know that then, as now, there 
were towns almost wherever there was land 
fit for dwellings, and paths that led from one 
to the other. It is clear that the Indians 
knew the whole country well. The routes 
they finally chose resulted from long experi- 
ence, and were as direft as the nature of the 
ground made possible. 

The study of trails opens up to us a broader 
view of ancient Indian life than we are apt 
to entertain. 

We find the sites of villages on the banks 
of the rivers and larger inflowing streams ; 
travel by canoes was universal. No locality 
was so favorable as the open valley, and here 
the greater number of Indians doubtless 
dwelt. But the river and its fertile shores 
13* 



150 An Indian Trail 

could not yield all that this people needed : 
they had to draw from the resources of the 
hills behind them. They soon marked the 
whole region with a net-work of trails leading 
to the various points whence they drew the 
necessities of life. The conditions of the 
present day are laid down on essentially the 
same lines as then. 

An Indian town was not a temporary tent 
site, or mere cluster of wigwams, here to-day 
and miles away to-morrow ; nor did these 
people depend solely upon the chase. Be- 
side the trail over which I recently passed 
was a great clearing that had been an orchard. 
We can yet find many a barren spot that is 
rightly known to the people of to-day as 
an Indian field. So persistently were their 
cornfields cropped that at last the soil was 
absolutely exhausted, and has not yet re- 
covered its fertility. 

There was systematic bartering, too, as the 
red pipe-stone or catlinite from Minnesota 
and obsidian from the more distant North- 
west, found on the Atlantic coast, as well as 
ocean shells picked up in the far interior, all 
testify. There was also periodical journey- 
ing in autumn from inland to the sea-coast to 



An Indian Trail 151 

gather supplies of oysters, clams, and other 
" sea food," which were dried by smoking 
and then " strung as beads and carried as 
great coils of rope" back to the hills to be 
consumed during the winter. 

Many small colonies, too, passed the win- 
ters on the coast in the shelter of the great 
pine forests that extended to the very ocean 
beach. It was no hap-hazard threading of a 
wilderness to reach these distant points. The 
paths were well defined, well used. For how 
long we can only conjeflure, but the vast ac- 
cumulations of shells on the coast, often now 
beneath the water, point to a time so distant 
that the country wore a different aspedl from 
what it now does ; a time when the land rose 
far higher above the tide and extended sea- 
ward where now the ocean rolls resistlessly. 

Returning inland, let us trace another of 
these old-time paths from the river-shore 
whereon the Indians had long dwelt, over 
hill and dale until we reach a valley hemmed 
in by low, rolling hills. 

It is a pretty spot still, although marred by 
the white man's work ; but why was it the 
goal of many a weary journey ? 

Kere is found the coveted jasper, varied in 



152 An Indian Trail 

hue as autumn leaves or a summer sunset. 
The quick eye of some wandering hunter, it 
may be, found a chance fragment, and, look- 
ing closer, saw that the ground on which he 
stood was filled with it ; or a freshet may 
have washed the soil from an outcropping of 
the mineral. Who can tell ? It must suffice 
to know that the discovery was made in 
time, and a new industry arose. No other 
material so admirably met the Indian's need 
for arrow-points, for the blades of spears, for 
knives, drills, scrapers, and the whole range 
of tools and weapons in daily use. 

So it came that mining camps were estab- 
lished. To this day, in these lonely hills, 
we can trace out the great pits the Indians 
dug, find the tools with which they toiled, 
and even the ashes of their camp-fires, where 
they slept by night. So deeply did the 
Indian work the land wheresoever he toiled 
that even the paths that led from the mines 
to the distant village have not been wholly 
blotted out. 

The story of the jasper mines has yet to 
be told, and it may be long before the full 
details are learned concerning the various 
processes through which the mineral passed 



An Indian Trail 153 

before it came into use as a finished produft. 
Much vain speculation has been indulged in ; 
the fancied method of reducing a thick blade 
to a thin one has been elaborately described, 
although never carried out by any human 
being ; in short, the impossible has been 
boldly asserted as a faft beyond question. 

The Indian's history can be read but in 
small part from the handiwork that he has 
left behind. 

One phase of it, in the valley of the Dela- 
ware, is more clearly told than all else, — the 
advance from a primitive to a more cultured 
status. There were centuries during which 
jasper was known only as river-pebbles, and 
its discovery in abundance had an influence 
upon Indians akin to that upon Europe's 
stone-age people when they discovered the 
use of metals. At least here in the valley of 
the Delaware this is true. 

It is vain to ask for the beginning of man's 
career in this region ; what we find but hints 
at it. But he came when there were no 
trails over the hills, no path but the icy river's 
edge ; only as the centuries rolled by was the 
country developed to the extent of knowing 
every nook and corner of the land, and high- 



154 "^^ Indian Trail 

ways and by-ways became common, like the 
roads that now reach out in every direftion. 

A "trail," then, has a wealth of meaning, 
and those who made it were no " mere sav- 
ages," as we so glibly speak of the Indians, 
thanks to the average school-books. 

The haughty Delawares had fields and or- 
chards ; they had permanent towns ; they 
mined such minerals as were valuable to 
them ; they had weapons of many patterns ; 
they were jewellers in a crude way, and fin- 
ished many a stone ornament in a manner that 
still excites admiration. They were travellers 
and tradesmen as well as hunters and warriors. 

Although my day's search for relics of these 
people had yielded but a few arrow-points, 
potsherds, and a stone axe, when I saw the 
Indian on his way from school, walking in the 
very path his people had made long centuries 
ago, the story of their ancient sojourn here 
came vividly to mind in the dim light of an au- 
tumn afternoon, when a golden mist wrapped 
the hills and veiled the valleys beyond, and I 
had a glimpse of pre-Columbian America. 



CHAPTER TWELFTH 

A PRE-COLUMBIAN 
DINNER 

A PONDEROUS geologist, with weighty 
tread and weightier manner, brought 
his foot down upon the unoffending sod and 
declared, " These meadows are sinking at a 
rapid rate ; something over two feet a cen- 
tury." We all knew it, but Sir Oracle had 
spoken, and we little dogs did not dare to bark. 
Not long after I returned alone to these ill- 
fated meadows and began a leisurely, all-day 
ramble. They were very beautiful. There 
was a wealth of purple and of white boneset 
and iron-weed of royal dye. Sunflower and 
primrose gilded the hidden brooks, and every 
knoll was banked with rose-pink centaury. 
Nor was this all. Feathery reeds towered 
above the marsh, and every pond was em- 
purpled with pontederia and starred with 



156 A Pre-Columbian Dinner 

lilies. Afar oiF, acres of nut-brown sedge 
made fitting background for those meadow 
trafts that were still green, while close at 
hand, more beautiful than all, were struggling 
growths held down by the golden-dodder's 
net that overspread them. 

It does not need trees or rank shrubbery to 
make a wilderness. This low-lying traft to- 
day, with but a summer's growth above it, is 
as wild and lonely as are the Western plains. 
Lonely, that is, as man thinks, but not for- 
saken. The wily mink, the pert weasel, the 
musk-rat, and the meadow-mouse ramble in 
safety through it. The great blue heron, its 
stately cousin, the snowy egret, and the dainty 
least bittern find it a congenial home. 

The fiery dragon-fly darts and lazy butter- 
flies drift across the blooming waste ; bees 
buzz angrily as you approach ; basking snakes 
bid you defiance. Verily, this is wild life's 
domain and man is out of place. 

It was not always so. The land is sink- 
ing, and what now of that older time when 
it was far above its present level, — a high, 
dry, upland traft, along which flowed a clear 
and rapid stream ? The tell-tale arrow-point 
is our guide, and wherever the sod is broken 



A Pre-Columbian Dinner 157 

we have an inkling of Indian history. The 
soil, as we dig a little deeper, is almost black 
with charcoal-dust, and it is evident that 
centuries ago the Indians were content to 
dwell here, and well they might be. Even 
in colonial days the place had merit, and es- 
caped not the eager eyes of Penn's grasping 
followers. It was meadow then, and not 
fitted for his house, but the white man built 
his barn above the ruins of his dusky prede- 
cessor's home. All trace of human habita- 
tion is now gone, but the words of the ge- 
ologist kept ringing in my ears, and of late 
I have been digging. It is a little strange 
that so few traces of the white man are found 
as compared with relics of the Indian. From 
the barn that once stood here and was long 
ago destroyed by a flood one might expeft to 
find at least a rusty nail. 

The ground held nothing telling of a re- 
cent past, but was eloquent of the long ago. 
Dull indeed must be the imagination that 
cannot recall what has been here brought 
to light by the aid of such an implement 
as the spade. Not only were the bow and 
spear proved to be the common weapons 
of the time, but there were in even greater 
14 



158 A Pre-Columbian Dinner 

abundance, and of many patterns, knives to 
flay the game. It is not enough to merely 
glance at a trimmed flake of flint or care- 
fully-chipped splinter of argillite, and say to 
yourself, " A knife." Their great variety 
has a significance that should not be over- 
looked. The same implement could not 
be put to every use for w^hich a knife was 
needed ; hence the range in size from several 
inches to tiny flakes that will likely remain a 
puzzle as to their purpose. 

Besides home produfts, articles are found 
that have come from a long distance, and 
no class of objefts is more suggestive than 
those that prove the widely-extended system 
of barter that prevailed at one time among 
the Indians of North America. There are 
shells and shell ornaments found in Wis- 
consin which must have been taken there 
from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico ; 
catlinite or red pipe-stone ornaments and 
pipes found in New Jersey that could only 
have come from Minnesota. Shell beads are 
often found in graves in the Mississippi Valley 
that were brought from the Pacific coast, and 
the late Dr. Leidy has described a shell bead, 
concerning which he states that it is the Conus 



A Pre-Columbian Dinner 159 

ternatus, a shell which belongs to the west 
coast of Central America. This was found, 
with other Indian relics, in Hartman's Cave, 
near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Two small 
arrow-points found in New Jersey a year or 
more ago proved to be made of obsidian. 
These specimens could only have come from 
the far South-west or from Oregon, and the 
probabilities are in favor of the latter locality. 
It is not unlikely that objefts like the above 
should find their way inland to the Great 
Lakes, and so across the continent and down 
the Atlantic coast. On the other hand, 
arrow-points could have had so little intrinsic 
value in the eyes of an Indian that we are 
naturally surprised that they should have 
been found so far from their place of origin. 
Obsidian has occurred but very rarely east 
of the Alleghanies, so far as I am aware. 
In the Sharpies collection, at West Chester, 
Pennsylvania, is a single specimen, reported 
to have been found near that place, and a few 
traces have since been discovered in the up- 
lands immediately adjoining these Delaware 
meadows, and really there is no reason to 
suppose that objedls of value should not have 
passed quite across the continent, or been 



i6o A Pre-Columbian Dinner 

carried from Mexico to Canada. There were 
no vast areas absolutely uninhabited and across 
which no Indian ever ventured. 

It has been suggested that, as iron was 
manufadlured in the valley of the Delaware 
as early as 1728, the supposed obsidian 
arrow-points are really made of slag from the 
furnaces, but a close examination of the speci- 
mens proves, it is claimed, this not to have 
been the case, and at this comparatively late 
date the making of stone arrow-points had 
probably ceased. Just when, however, the 
use of the bow as a weapon was discarded 
has not been determined, but fire-arms were 
certainly common in 1728 and earlier. 

A careful study, too, of copper imple- 
ments, which are comparatively rare, seems 
to point to the conclusion that very few were 
made of the native copper found in New 
Jersey, Maryland, and elsewhere along the 
Atlantic coast, but that they were made in 
the Lake Superior region and thence grad- 
ually dispersed over the Eastern States. The 
large copper spear from Betterton, Maryland, 
recently found, and another from New Jersey, 
bear a striking resemblance to the spear-heads 
from the North-west, where unquestionably 



A Pre-Columbian Dinner i6i 

the most expert of aboriginal coppersmiths 
lived. Of course, the many small beads of 
this metal occasionally found in Indian graves 
in the Delaware Valley might have been made 
of copper found near by, but large masses are 
very seldom met vv^ith. 

Speaking of copper beads recalls the faft 
that a necklace comprising more than one 
hundred was recently found on the site of 
an old Dutch trader's house, on an island in 
the Delaware. They were of Indian manu- 
fafture, and had been in the fur trader's pos- 
session, if we may judge from the fa£l that 
they were found with hundreds of other 
relics that betokened not merely European, 
but Dutch occupation of the spot. This 
trader got into trouble and doubtless de- 
served his summary taking off. 

It is not *• a most absurd untruth," as was 
stated not long ago in the Critic in a review 
of a New York history, that the Indians were 
** a people of taste and industry, and in morals 
quite the peers of their Dutch neighbors." 
They had just as keen a sense of right and 
wrong. There never was a handful of colo- 
nists in North America whose whole history 
their descendants would care to have known. 
/ 14* 



1 62 A Pre-Columbian Dinner 

The truth is, we know very little of the 
Indian prior to European contaft. Carpet- 
knight archaeologists and kid-gloved explorers 
crowd the pages of periodical literature, it 
is true, but we are little, if any, the wiser. 

It is supposed, and is even asserted, that 
the Indian knew nothing of forks ; but that 
he plunged his fingers into the boiling pot or 
held in his bare hands the steaming joints of 
bear or venison is quite improbable. Now, 
the archaeologist talks glibly of bone awls 
whenever a sharpened splinter of bone is 
presented him, as if such instruments were 
only intended to perforate leather. They 
doubtless had other uses, and I am sure that 
more than one split and sharpened bone which 
has been found would have served excellently 
well as a one-tined fork wherewith to lift from 
the pot a bit of meat. Whether or not such 
forks were in use, there were wooden spoons, 
as a bit of the bowl and a mere splinter of the 
handle serve to show. Kalm tells us that they 
used the laurel for making this utensil, but I 
fancied my fragment was hickory. Potsherds 
everywhere spoke of the Indians' feasting, 
and it is now known that, besides bowls and 
shallow dishes of ordinary sizes, they also 



A Pre-Columbian Dinner 163 

had vessels of several gallons' capacity. All 
these are broken now, but, happily, fragments 
of the same dish are often found together, 
and so we can reconstrudl them. 

But what did the Indians eat ? Quaint old 
Gabriel Thomas, writing about 1696, tells 
us that " they live chiefly on Maze or Indian 
Corn rested in the Ashes, sometimes beaten 
boyl'd with Water, called Homine. They 
have cakes, not unpleasant ; also Beans and 
Pease, which nourish much, but the Woods 
and Rivers afford them their provision ; they 
eat morning and evening, their Seats and 
Tables on the ground." 

In a great measure this same story of The 
Indians' food supply was told by the scattered 
bits found mingled with the ashes of an ancient 
hearth. Such fireplaces or cooking sites were 
simple in construftion, but none the less 
readily recognized as to their purpose. A few 
flat pebbles had been brought from the bed of 
the river near by, and a small paved area some 
two feet square was placed upon or very near 
the surface of the ground. Upon this the 
fire was built, and in time a thick bed of 
ashes accumulated. Just how they cooked 
can only be conjedlured, but the discovery of 



164 A Pre-Columbian Dinner 

very thick clay vessels and great quantities 
of fire-cracked quartzite pebbles leads to the 
conclusion that water was brought to the 
boiling-point by heating the stones to a red 
heat and dropping them into the vessel hold- 
ing the water. Thomas, as we have seen, 
says corn was " boyl'd with Water." Meat 
also was, I think, prepared in the same man- 
ner. Their pottery probably was poorly 
able to stand this harsh treatment, which 
would explain the presence of such vast quan- 
tities of fragments of clay vessels. Traces of 
vegetable food are now very rarely found. A 
few burnt nuts, a grain or two of corn, and, 
in one instance, what appeared to be a charred 
crab-apple, complete the list of what, as yet, 
have been picked from the mingled earth and 
ashes. This is not surprising, and what we 
know of vegetable food in use among the 
Delaware Indians is almost wholly derived 
from those early writers who were present 
at their feasts. Kalm mentions the roots of 
the golden-club, arrow-leaf, and ground-nut, 
besides various berries and nuts. It is well 
known that extensive orchards were planted 
by these people. It may be added that, in 
all probability, the tubers of that noble plant. 



A Pre-Columbian Dinner 165 

the lotus, were used as food. Not about 
these meadows, but elsewhere in New Jersey, 
this plant has been growing luxuriantly since 
Indian times. 

Turning now to the consideration of what 
animal food they consumed, one can speak 
with absolute certainty. It is clear that the 
Delawares were meat-eaters. It needs but 
little digging on any village site to prove this, 
and from a single fireplace deep down in the 
stiff soil of this sinking meadow have been 
taken bones of the elk, deer, bear, beaver, 
raccoon, musk-rat, and gray squirrel. Of 
these, the remains of deer were largely in ex- 
cess, and as this holds good of every village 
site I have examined, doubtless the Indians 
depended more largely upon this animal than 
upon all the others. Of the list, only the 
elk is extindt in the Delaware Valley, and 
it was probably rare even at the time of the 
European settlement of the country, except 
in the mountain regions. If individual tastes 
varied as they do among us, we have certainly 
sufficient variety here to have met every fancy. 

With a food supply as varied as this, an 
ordinary meal or an extraordinary feast can 
readily be recalled, so far as its essential feat- 



1 66 A Pre-Columbian Dinner 

ures are concerned. It is now September, 
and, save where the ground has been ruthlessly 
uptorn, everywhere is a wealth of early au- 
tumn bloom. A soothing quiet rests upon the 
scene, bidding us to retrospeftive thought. 
Not a bit of stone, of pottery, or of burned 
and blackened fragment of bone but stands 
out in the mellow sunshine as the feature of 
a long-forgotten feast. As I dreamily gaze 
upon the gatherings of half a day, I seem to 
see the ancient folk that once dwelt in this 
neglefted spot ; seem to be a guest at a pre- 
Columbian dinner in New Jersey. 



CHAPTER THIRTEENTH 

A DArs DIGGING 

A S long ago as November, 1679, two 
Dutchmen, Jasper Bankers and Peter 
Sluyter, worked their way laboriously across 
New Jersey from Manhattan Island, and 
reached South River, as the Delaware was 
then called, at least by the Hollanders. They 
were all agog to see the falls at the head of 
tide-water, and spent a miserable night in a 
rickety shanty, which was cold as Greenland, 
except in the fireplace, and there they roasted. 
All this was not calculated to put them in ex- 
cellent humor, and so the next day, when they 
stood on the river-bank and saw only a trivial 
rapid where they had expefted a second Ni- 
agara, their disgust knew no bounds. These 
travel-tired Dutchmen quickly departed, row- 
ing a small boat down-stream, and growling 
whenever the tide turned and they had to row 
against it. 

167 



1 68 A Day's Digging 

When they reached Burlington, they re- 
corded of an island nearly in front of the 
village, that it " formerly belonged to the 
Dutch Governor, who had made it a pleasure 
ground or garden, built good houses upon it, 
and sovv^ed and planted it. He also dyked 
and cultivated a large piece of meadow or 
marsh." The English held it at the time of 
their visit, and it was occupied by " some 
Quakers," as the authors quoted called them. 

One of these Dutch houses, built in part 
of yellow bricks, and with a red tiled roof, 
I found traces of years ago, and ever since 
have been poking about the spot, for the very 
excellent reasons that it is a pretty one, a se- 
cluded one, and as full of natural history 
attraftions now as it was of human interest 
when a Dutch beer-garden. 

Had no one who saw the place in its palmy 
days left a record concerning the beer, I 
could, at this late day, have given testimony 
that if there was no beer, there were beer 
mugs, and schnapps bottles, and wineglasses, 
for I have been digging again and found them 
all ; and then the pipes and pipe-stems ! I 
have a pile of over five hundred. The 
Dutch travellers were corredl as to the place 



A Day's Digging 169 

having been a pleasure-garden. It certainly 
was, and probably the very first on the Dela- 
ware River. But there was " pleasure," too, 
on the main shore, for the men who referred 
to the island stayed one night in Burlington, 
and, the next day being Sunday, attended 
Quaker meeting, and wrote afterwards, 
" What they uttered was mostly in one tone 
and the same thing, and so it continued until 
we were tired out and went away." Doubt- 
less they were prejudiced, and so nothing 
suited them, not even what they found to 
drink, for they said, " We tasted here, for the 
first time, peach brandy or spirits, which was 
very good, but would have been better if 
more carefully made." They did not like 
the English, evidently, for the next day they 
went to Takanij (Tacony), a village of Swedes 
and Finns, and there drank their fill of " very 
good beer" brewed by these people, and ex- 
pressed themselves as much pleased to find 
that, because they had come to a new country, 
they had not left behind them their old 
customs. 

The house that once stood where now 
is but a reach of abandoned and wasting 
meadow was erected in 1668 or possibly 

H IS 



170 A Day's Digging 

a little earlier. Its nearest neighbor was across 
a narrow creek, and a portion of the old 
building is said to be still standing. Armed 
with the few fafts that are on record, it is easy 
to pifture the place as it was in the days of 
the Dutch, and it was vastly prettier then than 
it is now. The public of to-day are not inter- 
ested in a useless marsh, particularly when 
there is better ground about it in abundance, 
and whoever wanders to such uncanny places 
is quite sure to be left severely alone. This 
was my experience, and, being undisturbed, I 
enjoyed the more my resurredlive work. I 
could enthuse, without being laughed at, over 
what to others was but meaningless rubbish, 
and I found very much that, to me, possessed 
greater interest than usual, because of a min- 
gling of late Indian and early European objefts. 
With a handful of glass, porcelain, and amber 
beads were more than one hundred of cop- 
per ; the former from Venice, the latter the 
handiwork of a Delaware Indian. With a 
white clay pipe, made in Holland in the 
seventeenth century, was found a rude brown 
clay one, made here in the river valley. 
Mingled with fragments of blue and white 
Delft plates, bowls, and platters, were sun- 



A Day*s Digging 171 

dried mud dishes made by women hereabouts 
during, who can say how many centuries ? 
How completely history and pre-history 
here overlapped ! We know pretty much 
everything about Dutchmen, but how much 
do we really know of the native American ? 
After nearly thirty years' digging, he has been 
traced from the days of the great glaciers to 
the beginnings of American history ; but we 
cannot say how long a time that comprises. 
The winter of 1 892-1 893 was, so far as 
appearances went, a return to glacial times. 
Ice was piled up fifty feet in height, and 
the water turned from the old channel of the 
river. The cutting of another one opened 
up new territory for the relic hunter when 
the ice was gone and the stream had returned 
to its old bed. Many an Indian wigwam 
site that had been covered deep with soil 
was again warmed by the springtide sun, and 
those were rare days when, from the ashes of 
forgotten camps, I raked the broken weapons 
and rude dishes that the red men had dis- 
carded. It was reading history at first hands, 
without other commentary than your own. 
The ice-scored gravel-beds told even an older 
story ; but no one day's digging was so full 



172 A Day's Digging 

of meaning, or brought me so closely in touch 
with the past, as when I uncovered what 
remained of the old Dutch trader's house ; 
traced the boundaries of the one-time pleas- 
ure-garden, hearing in the songs of birds the 
clinking of glasses, and then, in fancy, adding 
to the now deserted landscape the fur-laden 
canoes of the Indians who once gathered here 
to exchange for the coveted gaudy beads the 
skins of the many animals which at that time 
roamed the forests. 



CHAPTER FOURTEENTH 

DRIFTIJ^G 

AKE an early start if you wish an 
eventful outing. Why know the world 
only when the day is middle-aged or old ? 
A wise German has said, " The morning 
hour has gold in its mouth." For many a 
rod after leaving the wharf the river still 
" smoked," and the scanty glimpses between 
the rolling clouds of mist spurred the im- 
agination. There was nothing certain be- 
yond the gunwales. The pale-yellow color 
of the water near at hand and the deep-green 
and even black of that in the distance had 
no daytime suggestiveness. It was not yet 
the familiar river with its noonday glitter 
of blue and silver. 

It is not strange that the initial adventure to 
which the above-mentioned conditions natu- 
rally gave rise occurred while this state of un- 
certainty continued. Very soon I ran upon a 
IS* 173 



174 Drifting 

snag. To strike such an objeft in mid-river 
was rather startling. Was I not in or near the 
channel ? Steamboats come puffing and plow- 
ing here and sailing craft pass up and down, 
so my only care had been to avoid them ; but 
now there came in my path the twisted trunk 
of an old forest tree and held me fast. All 
the while the mist rose and fell, giving no 
inkling of my whereabouts. In the dim, 
misty light what a strange sea-monster this 
resurredled tree-trunk seemed to be ! Its 
thick green coat of silky threads lay closely 
as the shining fur of the otter, a mane of 
eel-grass floated on the water, the gnarly 
growths where branches once had been 
glistened as huge eyes, and broken limbs 
were horns that threatened quick destruftion. 
There was motion, too. Slowly it rose above 
the water and then as slowly sunk from view. 
Could it be possible that some long-necked 
saurian of the Jersey marls had come to life ? 
Nonsense ; and yet so real did it seem that 
I was ready for the river-horse to rise 

" from the waves beneath, 
And grin through the grate of his spiky teeth." 

With such an uncanny keeper, I was held a 



Drifting 175 

prisoner. At last I struck it with an oar to 
beat it back, and rocked the frail boat until 
I feared plunging into the deep water and 
deeper mud beneath. Deep water ? It sud- 
denly occurred to me to try its depth, and 
the truth was plain. I was far from the 
channel, and might with safety have waded 
to the shore. As usual, I had rashly jumped 
at conclusions. The mouth of an inflowing 
creek was near at hand, and this sunken tree, 
a relic of some forgotten freshet, had been 
lying here in the mud for several years. 
The tide lifted and let fall the trunk, but the 
root-mass was still strongly embedded. I 
knew the spot of old, and now, fearing 
nothing, was rational again. 

Such sunken trees, however, are well cal- 
culated to alarm the unthinking. It is said 
of one yet lying in the mud of Crosswicks 
Creek, that it rose so quickly once as to over- 
turn a boat. This is not improbable. That 
occurrence, if true, happened a century ago, 
and the same tree has since badly fright- 
ened more than one old farmer. I am told 
this of one of them who had anchored his 
boat here one frosty Odlober morning and 
commenced fishing. While half asleep, or 



176 Drifting 

but half sober, the tree slowly raised up and 
tilted the boat so that its occupant felt com- 
pelled to swim. His view of the offending 
monster was much like my own fevered vision 
of to-day. He not only swam ashore, but ran 
a mile over a soft marsh. To him the sea- 
serpent was a reality, although he saw it in 
the creek. 

It is of interest to note that among the 
early settlers of this region, for at least three 
generations, the impression was prevalent 
that there might be some monster lurking in 
the deep holes of the creek or in the river. 
The last of the old hunters and fishermen of 
this region, who had spent all his life in a boat 
or prowling along shore, was ever talking of a 
" king tortle" that for forty years had defied 
all his eiforts to capture it. *• Mostly, it 
only shows its top shell, but I have seen it 
fair and square, head and legs, and I don't 
know as I care to get very close, neither." 
This was his unvaried remark whenever I 
broached the subjeft. To have suggested that 
it was a sunken log, or in some other way 
tried to explain the matter, would only 
have brought about his ill will. I once at- 
tempted it, very cautiously, but he effeftually 



Drifting 177 

shut me up by remarking, " When this here 
creek runs dry and you can walk over its 
bottom, you'll lam a thing or two that ain't 
down in your books yet, and ain't goin' to 
be." The old man was right. I do not 
believe in " king tortles," but there certainly 
is " a thing or two" not yet in the books. 
Stay ! How big do our snappers grow ? Is 
the father of them all still hiding in the 
channel of Crosswicks Creek ? 

A description in an old manuscript journal, 
of the general aspeft of the country as seen 
from the river, bears upon this subjeft of 
strange wild beasts and monsters of the deep, 
as well as on that of sunken trees that en- 
dangered passing shallops. 

" As we pass up the river," this observant 
writer records, " we are so shut in by the 
great trees that grow even to the edge of the 
water, that what may lye in the interior is 
not to be known. That there be fertile 
land, the Indians tell us, but their narrow 
paths are toilsome to travel and there are 
none [of these people] now that seem will- 
ing to guide us. As we approached ffarns- 
worth's the channel was often very close to 
the shore, and at one time we were held by 



178 Drifting 

the great trees that overhung the bank and 
by one that had been fallen a long time and 
was now lodged in the water. As I looked 
towards the shore, I exclaimed, * Here we 
are indeed in a great wilderness. What 
strangeness is concealed in this boundless 
wood ? what wonder may at any time issue 
from it, or fierce monster not be lurking in 
the waters beneath us ?' Through the day 
the cries of both birds and beasts were heard, 
but not always. It was often so strangely 
quiet that we were more affefted thereby 
than by the sounds that at times issued forth. 
At night there was great howling, as we 
were told, of wolves, and the hooting of 
owls, and often there plunged into the stream 
wild stags that swam near to our boat. But 
greater than all else, to our discomfort, were 
the great sunken trunks of trees that were 
across the channel, where the water was of 
no great depth." 

What a change ! and would that this old 
traveller could revisit the Delaware to-day. 
My boat is free again and the mists are gone. 
Through the trees are sifted the level sun- 
beams. There is at least a chance now to 
compare notes. The forest is now a field. 



Drifting 179 

the trackless marsh a meadow ; wild life is 
largely a thing of the past ; silence, both day 
and night, replaces sound. No, not that ; 
but only the minor sounds are left. There 
are still the cry of the fish-hawk and the sweet 
song of the thrush. No stags now swim the 
river, but there remain the mink and the 
musk-rat. It has not been long since I saw 
a migration of meadow-mice, and at night, I 
am sure, many an animal dares to breast the 
stream, a mile wide though it be. Too 
cunning to expose itself by day, it risks its 
life at night ; and how tragic the result when, 
nearly at the journey's end, it is seized by a 
lurking foe ; dragged down, it may be, by a 
snake or a turtle ! 

The world is just as full of tragedy as ever, 
and, let us hope, as full of comedy. In a 
bit of yonder marsh, above which bends the 
tall wild rice, there is daily enafted scene 
after scene as full of import as those which 
caused the very forest to tremble when the 
wolf and panther quarrelled over the elk or 
deer that had fallen. 

It has been insisted upon that a goal-less 
journey is necessarily a waste of time. If 
on foot, v/e must keep forever on the go j if 



i8o Drifting 

in a boat, we must keep bending to the oars. 
It is this miserable fallacy that makes so many 
an out-door man and woman lose more than 
half of that for which they went into the 
fields. Who cares if you did see a chippy at 
every turn and flushed a bittern at the edge 
of the marsh ? If you had been there before 
them, and these birds did the walking, you 
would have gone home the wiser. It is not 
the mere fadl that there are birds that con- 
cerns us, but what are they doing ? why are 
they doing it ? This the town-pent people 
are ever anxious to know, and the fa£ls cannot 
be gathered if you are forever on the move. 
Suppose I rush across the river and back, 
what have I seen ? The bottom of the boat. 
I came to see the river and the sky above, 
and if this is of no interest to the reader, let 
him turn the leaf. 

Does every storm follow the track of the 
sun ? As the sun rose there were clouds 
in the east and south and a haziness over 
the western sky. Had I asked a farmer as 
to the weather probabilities, he would have 
looked everywhere but due north. Why 
does he always ignore that quarter ? There 
may be great banks of cloud there, but they 



Drifting i8i 

go for nothing. " Sou-east" and " sou-west" 
are forever rung in your ears, but never a word 
of the north. Sometimes I have thought it 
may be for this reason that about half the 
time the farmer is all wrong, and the heaviest 
rains come when he is most sure that the day 
will be clear. 

Looking upward, for the sky was clear in 
that direftion now, I saw that there were birds 
so far above me that they appeared as mere 
specks. Very black when first seen, but oc- 
casionally they flashed as stars seen by day 
from the bottom of a well. They could not 
be followed, except one that swept swiftly 
earthward, and the spreading tail and curve 
of wings told me it was a fish-hawk. What 
a glorious outlook from its ever-changing 
point of view ! From its height, it could 
have seen the mountains and the ocean, and 
the long reach of river valley as well. If the 
mists obscure it all, why should a bird linger 
in the upper air ? The prosy matter of food- 
getting has nothing to do with it. While in 
camp on Chesapeake Bay, I noticed that the 
fish-hawks were not always fishing, and often 
the air rang with their strange cries while 
soaring so far overhead as to be plainly seen 
i6 



1 82 Drifting 

only with a field-glass. Every movement sug- 
gested freedom from care as they romped in 
the fields of space. It is not strange that 
they scream, or laugh, shall we say ? when 
speeding along at such rate and in no danger 
of collision. If I mistake not, the cry of 
exultation is coincident with the downward 
swoop, and I thought of old-time yelling 
when dashing down a snow-clad hill-side ; 
but how sober was the work of dragging the 
sled up-hill ! The hawks, I thought, were 
silent when upward bound. If so, there is 
something akin to humanity in the hawk 
nature. 

I have called the cry of the fish-hawk a 
** laugh," but, from a human stand-point, do 
birds laugh ? It is extremely doubtful, though 
I recall a pet sparrow-hawk that was given 
to playing tricks, as I called them, and the 
whole family believed that this bird aftually 
laughed. Muggins, as we named him, had a 
fancy for pouncing upon the top of my head 
and, leaning forward, snapping his beak in my 
face. Once an old uncle came into the room 
and was treated in this fashion. Never having 
seen the bird before, he was greatly aston- 
ished, and indignant beyond measure when 



Drifting 1 83 

the hawk, being rudely brushed off, carried 
away his wig. Now the bird was no less 
astonished than the man, and when he saw 
the wig dangling from his claws he gave a 
loud cackle, unlike anything we had ever 
heard before, and which was, I imagine, 
more an expression of amusement than of 
surprise. I think this, because afterwards I 
often played the game of wig with him, to 
the bird's delight, and he always " laughed" 
as he carried off the prize. On the contrary, 
the unsuccessful attempt to remove natural 
hair elicited no such expression, but some- 
times a squeal of disgust. 

In the Spectator of October i, 1892, page 
444, 1 find a most thoughtful article, entitled 
*' The Animal Sense of Humor," and I quote 
as follows : " The power of laughter is pecu- 
liar to man, and the sense of humor may be 
said, generally speaking, to be also his special 
property." Again, " We never saw the 
slightest approach to amusement in one animal 
at the mistakes of another, though dogs, so far 
as we can venture to interpret their thoughts, 
do really feel amusement at the mistakes of 
men." Possibly the author is right, but do 
not cats show a sense of humor at the rough- 



184 Drifting 

and-tumble gambols of their kittens ? Is not 
the sly cufF on the ear that sends a kitten 
sprawling indicative of a sense of fun on the 
part of tabby ? Our author says, " so far as 
we can venture to interpret their thoughts." 
*' Ay, there's the rub." No one can tell how 
far it is safe to venture, but I go a great deal 
beyond my neighbors. Our author con- 
cludes, " In animals, as in man, humor is 
the result of civilization, and not as we under- 
stand it, a natural and spontaneous develop- 
ment." I cannot subscribe to this. I know 
little of domestic animals, but have got the 
idea of an animal's sense of humor from wild 
life, and confirmed it by what I have seen 
of cats and dogs. 

While I have been drifting, and using my 
eyes and ears instead of legs and arms, as is 
advocated, the clouds, too, have been creep- 
ing this way, and, while the morning is yet 
fresh, it is certainly going to rain. Had I 
consulted the barometer, I would have known 
this ; but then, knowing it, might I not have 
stayed at home ? Why not enjoy part of a 
day ? That the rain will soon be here does 
not diminish one's pleasure, unless there is a 
fear of getting wet, and this is all too com- 



Drifting 185 

mon. I hope that it does not mean that you 
have but one suit of clothes. 

The approaching rain, the increasing 
cloudiness, the shut-in appearance, made the 
river exceedingly attraftive. With the down- 
dropping clouds dropped down the birds, 
and the swallows now skimmed the water as 
they had been skimming the sky. The fish- 
hawks departed, but a host of land-birds 
crossed the stream, as if comparing the shelter 
afforded by the cedars on one side and pines 
on the other. These birds chattered as they 
flew by, and turned their heads up- and down- 
stream, as if curious as to all that might be 
going on. Suddenly the water ceased to be 
rippled, and far down-stream a cloud appeared 
to have reached the river. It was the rain. 
It seemed to march very slowly, and every 
drop made a dimple on the river's breast. 
Then I could hear the on-coming host, the 
sound having a distindl bell-like tinkle as each 
drop touched the surface and disappeared. 
A curious effeft, too, was produced by the 
wind or the varying density of the cloud 
above, in that the drops were very near to- 
gether where I happened to be, and much 
farther apart and larger some distance beyond 
16* 



1 86 Drifting 

the boat. I could of course make no meas- 
urements, but appearances suggested that in 
the middle of the river the drops were less 
numerous in the proportion of one to five. 
Does it usually rain harder over land than 
over water ? Heretofore I had seen the rain 
upon the river while on shore, and was now 
very glad to have been caught adrift, so as to 
observe it from a new point of view. It 
was a beautiful sight, well worth the thorough 
wetting that I got and which drove me home 
soon after with pleasant thoughts of my goal- 
less journey. 



CHAPTER FIFTEENTH 

FoorpRiNrs 

XT ZHILE the camp-fire was smoking, for 
' the wood was green and I was willing 
that my companion should worry over it, I 
strolled up the long, sandy beach with no par- 
ticular objedl in mind and quite ready to meet 
and parley with any creature that I overtook. 
I saw only evidences of what had been there, 
or what I supposed had been. There were 
tracks that I took to be those of herons, and 
others that suggested a raccoon in search of 
crayfish. Here and there a mouse had hur- 
ried by. What lively times had been kept up 
at low tide within sight of the tent door ! and 
yet we knew nothing of it. But these tracks 
were not well defined, and therefore why 
not misinterpreted ? I have not suggested all 

the possibilities of the case Here my 

meditations were checked by the call to 
breakfast, but I took up the subjedl again as I 

187 



1 88 Footprints 

walked alone in the woods, for I was but 
the companion of a worker, not one myself. 
It occurred to me that when we read of 
hunters, or perhaps have followed a trapper 
in his rounds, we have been led to think that 
footprints are animal autography that the 
initiated can read without hesitation. To 
distinguish the track of a rabbit from that of 
a raccoon is readily done, and we can go 
much further, and determine whether the 
animal was walking or running, made a leap 
here or squatted there ; but can we go to any 
length, and decipher every impress an animal 
may have made in passing over the sand or 
mud ? I think not. I have seen a twig sent 
spinning a long distance up the beach at low 
tide, making a line of equidistant marks that 
were extremely life-like in appearance. A 
cloud of dead leaves have so dotted an ex- 
panse of mud that a gunner insisted there 
had been a flock of plover there a few mo- 
ments before he arrived. All depends, or 
very much does, on the condition of the sur- 
face marked. If very soft and yielding, the 
plainest bird-tracks may be distorted, and a 
mere dot, on the other hand, may have its 
outline so broken as to appear as though made 



Footprints 189 

by a bird or mammal. Still, tracks are a 
safe guide in the long run, and, whether 
our opinion as to them be correct or not, the 
rambler finds something worth seeing, and 
he goes on anything but a wild-goose chase 
who sometimes finds himself mistaken. It 
is well to check our confidence occasionally 
and realize the limits of our power. 

Opportunity aiForded while in camp, and 
I made a short study of footprints. With 
a field-glass I noted many birds, and then 
going to the spot, examined the impressions 
their feet had made. A night-heron did not 
come down flatly upon its feet with outspread 
toes, and so the tracks were quite different 
from the impressions made when the bird 
walked. Crows, I noticed, both hopped 
and walked, and the marks were very dif- 
ferent, the former being broad and ill-defined 
in comparison with the traces of the same 
bird's stately tread. Had the bird not been 
seen, any one would have supposed two creat- 
ures had been keeping close company, or that 
some one individual had passed by in the 
very path of another. The purple grakle 
and red-winged blackbird made tracks too 
much alike to be distinguished, yet these 



190 Footprints 

birds have not the same size or shape of foot. 
A water-snake came up over the mud and 
left a line of marks upon the sand that could 
not be recognized as that of any animal, ex- 
cept it might be a faint resemblance to the trail 
of a mussel. I chased a dozen crayfish over 
a mud flat, and their backward and sidewise 
leapings caused an old gunner to say there 
had been plover about. A blue-winged teal 
made a long double line of dents in the sand 
before it rose clear of the beach, and these 
were very like many a footprint I had pre- 
viously seen. What, then, must we think of 
the fossil footprints of which so much has 
been written ? As diiferent species, a long 
series of these impressions in the rock have 
been described and given high-sounding titles. 
I am not entitled to an opinion, but have 
doubts, nevertheless, of the wisdom of con- 
sidering every slightly different form as made 
by a different creature. I have given my 
reasons, and will only add another instance, 
one of greater significance than all as bear- 
ing upon the question. I startled a slum- 
bering jumping-mouse last summer and it 
bounded across the smooth sand bared by the 
outgoing tide. Its track then was one made 



Footprints 191 

by its body rather than the extremities, and 
a curious dent in the river-shore's smooth 
surface it was ; but before taking again to the 
woods it walked in its peculiar way, and the 
little footprints were quite distinft and un- 
mistakably those of a small mammal. Had 
the two sets of markings been preserved in 
a slab of sandstone, no ichnologist would 
have recognized the truth, but probably would 
have said, " Here is a case where some leap- 
ing creature has overtaken a small rodent and 
devoured it." 

Difficult as fossil footprints may be to de- 
cipher, they call up with wonderful distinft- 
ness the long ago of other geologic ages. It 
is hard to realize that the stone of which our 
houses are built once formed the tide-washed 
shore of a primeval river or the bed of a lake 
or ocean gone long before man came upon 
the scene. 

But the footprints of to-day concern me 
more. Looking over the side of the boat, I 
saw several mussels moving slowly along and 
making a deep, crooked groove in the ripple- 
marked sand, " streaking the ground with 
sinuous trace," as Milton puts it ; and the 
school of blunt-headed minnows made little 



192 Footprints 

dents in the sand wherever the water was shal- 
low, when they turned suddenly and darted 
ofF-shore. This sand seemed very unstable, 
and a little agitation of the water caused 
many a mark to be wiped out ; and yet we 
find great slabs of ripple-marked and foot- 
marked sandstone. I picked up such a piece 
not long ago on which were rain-drop marks. 
This is the story of a million years ago ; but 
who ever found Indian moccasin-marks not 
two centuries old ? The footprints that 
could tell us many a wonderful story are all 
gone and the tale of a rain-drop remains. 
This is a bit aggravating. Here where we 
have pitched our camp, or very near it, was 
a Swedish village in 1650 and later, and for 
two days I have been hunting for evidence 
of the fadl, — some bit of broken crockery, 
rusty nail, glass, pewter spoon, anything, — 
but in vain. History records the village, and 
correflly, without a doubt, but there are no 
footprints here, nor other trace to show that 
a white man ever saw the place until our tent 
was pitched upon the beach. 

Towards evening I had occasion to renew 
my youth, — in other words, " run on an 
errand," as my mother put it, — and going half 



Footprints 193 

a mile through the woods, I came to a nar- 
row but well-worn path. This was so akin 
to my footprint thoughts of the morning that I 
gladly followed it instead of making a short 
cut. It was fortunate, for the path led di- 
reftly to where I wished to go, and our theo- 
retical geography, as usual, was terribly out 
of joint. As it was, on the edge of an old 
village I found a very old man in a very old 
house. His memory as to the earlier half of 
the century was excellent, and he gave me 
the desired information and more. I spoke 
of the path through the woods, and he 
chuckled to himself. 

" Through the woodses, eh ? Well, when 
I made the path, goin' and comin' through 
the brush that wasn't shoulder-high, there was 
no trees then. That was more'n forty years 
ago." 

" No, John, 'twa'n't," piped a weak voice 
from the interior of the little cottage ; 
" 'twa'n't mor'n " 

" Laws, man, don't mind her. She dis- 
putes the almanac, and every winter gets in 
New Year's ahead of Christmas." 

I did not stop to argue the matter, but 
hurried campward, glad that, if I could find 
I n 17 



194 Footprints 

no footprints of human interest and historic, 
I at least had followed a path made forty 
years ago, — a path that had been worn among 
bushes and now led through a forest. It was 
indeed suggestive. By the camp-fire that 
night I vowed to plant a forest where now 
there was but a thicket, and in my dreams 
I walked through a noble wood. 

Think how much might be done to beau- 
tify the world, and how little is accom- 
plished. 



CHAPTER SIXTEENTH 

BEES AND BUCKWHEAT 

nr^HE great storm of yesterday cleared the 
"*" air as well as cleaned the beaches, and 
the river was fresh and sparkling as though 
the tempest had added new life, so that the 
listless midsummery water was now as cham- 
pagne, " with beaded bubbles winking at the 
brim." The air was heavy with sweetness 
and with song, the fields and meadows painted 
as the rose. The buckwheat was in bloom, 
and a million bees were humming. The 
pasture was gay with pink gerardia, or re- 
flefted the summer sky where the day-flower 
blossomed. There was no commingling of 
these late flowers. Each had its own acre, 
exercised squatter sovereignty, and allowed 
no trespassing. The only evidence of man's 
interference, except the buckwheat-field, was 
a dilapidated worm-fence, and this is one of 
several instances where beauty increases hand 

19s 



196 Bees and Buckwheat 

in hand with decay. The older such a fence, 
the better ; when merely a support for Vir- 
ginia creeper or the rank trumpet-vine, it is 
worthy the rambler's regard. Wild life long 
ago learned what a safe snug-harbor such 
ruined fences offer. It puzzles even a mink 
to thread their mazes, and the shy rabbit that 
has its " form" in a brier-hidden hollow of 
the crooked line feels that it is safe. 

There are traces of these old fences of 
which no record remains, placed perhaps by 
the very earliest settler in a traft that he had 
cleared and which has since gone back to an 
almost primitive state. In an old woodland 
I once traced a fence by the long line of cy- 
pripediums in bloom, which were thriving in 
the mould of decayed fence-rails, a pretty if 
not permanent monument to departed worth. 

A word more of these old fences in winter. 
When the snow beats across the field, it stops 
here and gracefully curves above it, arching 
the rails and vines until all is hidden, unless 
it be some lonely projefting stake, by which 
alone it communicates with the outside world. 
I rashly attempted once to go across-lots over 
a new country, and made a discovery. The 
snow-bound fence was but a drift, I thought. 



Bees and Buckwheat 197 

hut it proved to be far different. Tlie thick 
mat of hardy growths had kept back the snow, 
which was but a roof and did not wholly ex- 
clude the light. For some distance I could 
dimly make out the various growths, and each 
little cedar stood up as a sentinel. A loud 
word sounded and resounded as if I had spo- 
ken in an empty room or shouted in a long 
tunnel. The coldest day in the year could 
not inconvenience any creature that took 
shelter here, and I found later that life, both 
furred and feathered, knew the old fence far 
better than I did. 

But this is the last day but one of August, 
and so nominally the end of summer. Only 
nominally, for these flowery meadows and 
sweet-scented fields contradift the almanac. 
This quiet nook in the Delaware meadows 
offers no intimation of autumn until October, 
and late in the month at that. The bees and 
buckwheat will see to this, or seem to, which 
is just as much to the purpose. To-day along 
the old worm-fence are many kingbirds, and, 
although mute, they are not moping. There 
is too much inseft life astir for that. With 
them are orioles and bluebirds, the whole 
making a loose flock of perhaps a hundred 
17* 



ipS Bees and Buckwheat 

birds. The bluebirds are singing, but in a 
half-hearted, melancholy way, reminding me 
of an old man who spent his time when over 
ninety in humming " Auld Lang Syne." Be- 
fore the buckwheat has lost its freshness these 
birds will all be gone, but at what time the 
bluebirds part company with the others I do 
not know. They certainly do not regularly 
migrate, as do the others. There was a colony 
of them that lived for years in and about my 
barn, and one was as sure to see them in 
January as in June. No English sparrows 
could have been more permanently fixed. 

When the buckwheat is ripe and the fields 
and meadows are brown, there will be other 
birds to take their place. Tree-sparrows from 
Canada and white-throats from New England 
will make these same fields merry with music, 
and the tangle about the old fence will ring 
with gladness. But it is August still, and why 
anticipate ? High overhead there are black 
specks in the air, and we can mark their course, 
as they pass, by the bell-like chink-chink that 
comes floating earthward. It is one of the 
sounds that recall the past rather than refer 
to the present. The reed-bird of to-day was 
a bobolink last May. His roundelay that told 



Bees and Buckwheat 199 

then of a long summer to come is now but a 
single note of regret that the promised summer 
is a thing of the past. It is the Alpha and 
Omega of the year's song-tide. Not that we 
have no other songs when the reed-bird has 
flown to the Carolina rice-fields. While I 
write, a song-sparrow is reciting reminis- 
cences of last May, and there will be ringing 
rounds of bird-rejoicing from November to 
April. Still, the initial thought holds good : 
bobolink in May, and only a reed-bird in 
August ; the beginning and the end ; the her- 
ald of Summer's birth and her chief mourner ; 
Alpha and Omega. 

Where the brook that drains the meadow 
finds its way, the little rail-birds have con- 
gregated. Many spent their summer along 
the Musketaquid, where Thoreau spent his 
best days, but they bring no message from 
New England. They very seldom speak 
above a whisper. Not so the king-rail. He 
chatters as he threads the marsh and dodges 
the great blue harrier that sweeps above the 
cat-tail grasses and has to be content with a 
sparrow or a mouse. 

These late August days are too often over- 
full, and one sees and hears too much, — so 



200 Bees and Buckwheat 

very much that it is hard to give proper heed 
to any one of the many sights and sounds. 
But how much harder to turn your back upon 
it ! All too soon the sun sinks into the golden 
clouds of the w^estern sky. 

That w^as a happy day when the buckwheat 
was threshed in the field, on a cool, clear, 
crisp Oftober morning. The thumping of 
the flails on the temporary floor put the world 
in good humor. No bird within hearing but 
sang to its time-keeping. Even the crows 
cawed more methodically, and squirrels 
barked at the same instant that the flail sent 
a shower of brown kernels dancing in the 
air. The quails came near, as if impatient 
for the grains eyes less sharp than theirs would 
fail to find. It was something at such a time 
to lie in the gathering heap of straw and join 
in the work so far as to look on. That is a 
boy's privilege which we seldom are anxious 
to outgrow. A nooning at such a time meant 
a fire to warm the dinner, and the scanty time 
allowed was none too short for the threshers 
to indulge in weather prognostications. This 
is as much a habit as eating, and to forego it 
would be as unnatural as to forego the taking 
of food. As the threshers ate, they scanned 



Bees and Buckwheat 201 

the surroundings, and not a tree, bush, or 
wilted weed but was held to bear evidence 
that the coming winter would be " open" or 
*' hard," as the oldest man present saw fit to 
predift. No one disputed him, and no one 
remembered a week later what he had said, 
so the old man's reputation was safe. 

The buckwheat threshed, the rest is all a 
matter of plain prose. Stay ! In the coming 
Indian summer there was always a bee-hunt. 
The old man whom we saw in the buckwheat- 
field in Oftober was our dependence for wild 
honey, which we fancied was better than that 
from the hives. He always went alone, 
carrying a wooden pail and a long, slender 
oaken staff. How he found the bee-trees so 
readily was a question much discussed. " He 
smells it," some one suggested ; ** He hears 
'em a-buzzin'," others remarked. Knowing 
when he was going, I once followed on the 
sly and solved the mystery. He went with- 
out hesitation or turning of the head to a 
hollow beech, and straightway commenced 
operations. I did not stay to witness this, but 
came away recalling many a Sunday after- 
noon's stroll with him in these same woods. 
What he had seen in August he had remem- 



202 Bees and Buckwheat 

bered in December, and, wise man that he 
was, said nothing meanwhile. Why, indeed, 
should he throw aside the opportunity to pose 
as one having superior knowledge, when 
others were so persistent in asserting it of 
him ? There is that much vanity in all men. 

But a year later his superior knowledge 
failed him. I had found the same tree in my 
solitary rambles, and was there ahead of him. 
Still, I never enjoyed my triumph. I felt 
very far from complimented when he re- 
marked, as an excuse for his failure, that " a 
skunk had been at the only bee-tree in the 
woods. He saw signs of the varmint all 
about ;" and when he said this he looked 
direftly at me, with his nose in the air. 

It is winter now, and when in the early 
morning I find cakes and honey upon the 
breakfast-table, excellent as they are in their 
way, they are the better that they call up the 
wide landscape of those latter August days 
and of frosty Oflober, for I see less of the 
morning meal before me than of bees and 
buckwheat. 



CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH 

DEAD LEAVES 

T HAVE often wondered why the Indians 
did not call November the month of 
dead leaves. The out-of-town world is full 
of them now. They replace the daisies and 
dandelions in the open fields, the violets and 
azaleas in the shady woods. They are a promi- 
nent feature of the village street. Many will 
cling to the trees the winter long, but mil- 
lions are scattered over the ground. Even 
on the river I find them floating, borne slowly 
by the tide or hurrying across the rippled 
surface, chased by the passing breeze. 

The pleasure — common to us all — we take 
in crushing them beneath our feet savors of 
heartlessness. Why should we not recall 
their kindness when, as bright-green leaves, 
each cast its mite of grateful shade, so dear 
to the rambler, and now, when they have 
fallen, let them rest in peace ? We should 

203 



204 Dead Leaves 

not be ugly and revengeful merely because it 
is winter. There is nothing to fret us in 
this change from shade to sunshine, from 
green leaves to brown. The world is not 
dead because of it. While the sun looks 
down upon the woods to-day there arises a 
sweet odor, pleasant as the breath of roses. 
The world dead, indeed ! What more vig- 
orous and full of life than the mosses cover- 
ing the rich wood-mould ? Before me, too, 
lies a long-fallen tree cloaked in moss greener 
than the summer pastures. Not the sea alone 
possesses transforming magic; there is also "a 
wW-change into something rich and strange." 
Never does the thought of death and decay 
centre about such a sight. The chickadee 
drops from the bushes above, looks the moss- 
clad log over carefully, and, when again poised 
on an overhanging branch, loudly lisps its 
praises. What if it is winter when you wit- 
ness such things ? One swallow may not 
make a summer, but a single chickadee will 
draw the sting from any winter morning. 

I never sit by the clustered dead leaves and 
listen to their faint rustling as the wind moves 
among them but I fancy they are whispering 
of the days gone by. What of the vanished 



Dead Leaves 205 

springtide, when they first timidly looked 
forth ? They greeted the returning birds, the 
whole merry host of north-bound warblers, 
and what startling fafts of the bird-world 
they might reveal ! There is no eye-witness 
equal to the leaf, and with them lives and 
dies many a secret that even the most patient 
ornithologist can never gain. How much 
they overhear of what the birds are saying ! 
to how much entrancing music they listen 
that falls not upon men's ears ! What a view 
of the busy world above us has the fluttering 
leaf that crowns the tall tree's topmost twig ! 
Whether in storm or sunshine, veiled in 
clouds or beneath a starlit sky, whatsoever 
happens, there is the on-looking leaf, a nat- 
uralist worth knowing could v/e but learn its 
language. 

A word here as to the individuality of living 
leaves. Few persons are so blind as to have 
never noticed how leaves differ. Of every 
size and shape and density, they have varied 
experiences, if not different functions, and 
their effeft upon the rambler in his wander- 
ings is by no means always the same. At 
high noon, when the midsummer sun strives 
to parch the world, let the rambler stand 



2o6 Dead Leaves 

first beneath an old oak and then pass to the 
quivering aspen, or pause in the shade of a 
way-side locust and then tarry beneath the 
cedar, at whose roots the sunshine never 
comes. It needs but to do this to realize 
that there are leaves and leaves : those that 
truly shelter and those that tease you by their 
fitfulness. 

It is winter now and the leaves are dead ; 
but, although blighted, they have not lost 
their beauty. Heaped in the by-paths of 
this ancient wood, they are closely associated 
with the pranks of many birds, and for this 
alone should be lovingly regarded. Even now 
I hear an overstaying chewink — for this is a 
warm wood the winter long — tossing them 
in little clouds about him as he searches for 
the abundant insefts that vainly seek shelter 
where they have fallen. The birds seem to 
seek fun as well as food among the leaves. I 
have often watched them literally dive from 
the overhanging bushes into a heap of leaves, 
and then with a flirt of the wings send dozens 
flying into the air. It is hard to imagine any 
other purpose than pure sport. When, as 
often happens, two or three follow their 
leader, I always think of a string of boys diving 



Dead Leaves 207 

or playing leap-frog. " Coincidence," cries 
old Prosy, with a wise shake of his head. 
Perhaps ; but I think old Prosy is a fool. 

The strange, retiring winter wren is equally 
a lover of dead leaves. He plays with them 
in a less boisterous manner, but none the less 
delights in tossing them to and fro. It is at 
such a time that a few notes of his marvellous 
summer song occasionally escape him. The 
white-throated sparrows fairly dance among 
or upon the heaped-up leaves, and play bo- 
peep with the clouds of them they send 
aloft ; and in February the foxie sparrows 
play the same pranks. Squirrels and mice 
are equally at home, and abandon all prudence 
when they frolic among the windrows. The 
more clatter and cackle, the better they are 
pleased. When freed from the restraint of 
fear, wild life is fun-loving to the very brim. 

Dead leaves are never deserted unless the 
weather is extremely cold or a storm has 
prevailed until they are a sodden mat. Even 
from such a wetting they soon recover and 
respond to the passing breeze's gentlest touch. 
Dead leaves are the matured fruit of summer, 
and what an important part they really play 
as the year closes ! They are not now of the 



2o8 Dead Leaves 

air, airy, but of the earth, earthy. Dead, it 
is true, yet living. Passive, yet how aftive ! 
They are whispering good cheer now to the 
sleeping buds that await the coming of a new 
year, and faithfully guard them when the 
storm rages. For such deeds we owe them 
our kindliest thoughts. 

In the golden sunshine of this dreamy day 
the leaves have yet another visitor that makes 
merry with them. The little whirlwind, 
without a herald, springs laughingly upon 
them, even when the profoundest quiet reigns 
throughout the wood. Touched by this 
fairy's wand, the leaves rise in a whirling 
pillar and dance down the narrow path into 
some even more secluded nook. Dead leaves, 
indeed ! Never did the wildest madcap of a 
courting bird play livelier pranks. 

Time was when I would have searched 
the woods for winter-green and worn it gayly. 
I am content to-day to carry a withered leaf. 



Index 

A. Allium, 77. 
Amelanchier , 140. 
Andromeda, 57. 
Ants, 14, 36. 
Arbutus, 51, 57, 62. 
Arronv -point, 156. 
Azalea, 141. 

B. 5Mr, 54. 
Bea-ver, 66. 
Beech, 43. 
-Swi, 54. 
Bittern, 73, 180. 

/eai^, 42. 
Bittersweet, 142. 
Blackbird, 32, 41, 67, 75, 189. 
Blueberry , 64. 

Bluebird, 18, 67, 143, 197. 
Bone set, 155. 
Butterflies, 20, 156. 
Buzzards, 67. 

C. Cardinal bird, 23, 59, 75, 80, 87, III, 144. 
Cat-bird, 32, 59, 87, 137, 146. 
Caterpillar, 133. 

18* 209 



2IO Index 

Cat/inite, 150, 158. 
Cat-tail, 42. 
Cedar, 64. 
Celastrus, 142. 
Centaury, 155. 
Centipede, 57. 
CAat, 32, 83. 
Cherry, luild, 43. 
Cheivink, 59, 80, 206. 
Chickadee, 204. 
Chimney-sivift, 20. 

c/ay, 35- 

Clethra, 141. 

Cougars, 65. 

Cow-bird, 93. 

Crayfish, 187, 190. 

Crocus, 145. 

Crow, II, 32, 47, 76, 86, 189, 

Cyperus, 77. 

D. Day-fiotuer, 195. 
£>«r, 54, 179. 
Deer-berry, 141. 
Deutxia, 141. 
Diver, 29. 
Dodder, 116, 156. 
Do've, 24. 
Dragon-fly, 156. 

Ducks, ivild, 86; wood-, 56. 

E. Eagle, 24. 
£./, 54. 



Index 211 

Elk, 179. 
Elmy 43. 

F. *^ False-teetb,^' 141. 

Finch, indigo, 72 ; purple, 59 ; thistle, 3a. 
Fly-catcher, 15, 32, 144. 

F'-«i:^. 58, 67. 

G. Galium, 77. 
Gerardia, 1 95. 
Golden-club, 56. 
Gra^/e, 32, 75, 145, 189. 
Grosbeak, rose-breasted, 59. 
C?tt/A, 76. 

Gum-tree, 66. 

H. Harrier, 199. 

Haivk, black, 17. 

duck-, 24. 

>£.-, 26, 32, 179, 181. 

sparroiv-, 18 2. 
Heron, blue, 42; ^re^n, 25; night-, 189. 
Herons, 41, 67, 187. 
Herring, 67. 
/f/c^ory, 17, 44. 
Ho//y, 51. 
Honeysuckle, 136. 
Humming-bird, 136. 
fly/a, 58. 

I. Indian grass, 64. 

r«//«, 148, 152, 157, 160. 



212 Index 

Ink-berry y 52. 
Iris, 40. 
Iron-'weed, 155. 

J. Jasper, 151, 

Jay, blue-, 47. 
Jerboa, 59. 

K. Kill-deer plo-ver, 32, 67, 77, 95. 

Kingbird, 41, 197. 
Kinglet, 65, 82. 
King-rail, 42, 199. 

Li. Leucothoe, 141. 

Lindera, 140. 
Liquidambar, 54. 
Loon, 67. 
Lotus, 41, 134. 

M. Magnolia, 66. 

Maple, 28, 52, 72. 
Martin, 31, 143. 

■^'"^> 53, 156, 179- 

Minnoiv, mud-, 39. 

Minnoivs, 126, 191. 

Mistletoe, 28, 66. 

Mocking-bird, 32. 

Mow, f/ai-, 57 ; reindeer, 54, 62. 

Mouse, meadow-, 17, 42, 156, 179. 

ivhite-footed, 59. 
Musk-rat, 29, 53, 156, 179. 
Mussel, 191. 



Index 213 



O. Oak, 10, ai, 44, 64, 138. 

ivillow-, 53. 
Obsidian, 150, 159. 
Opossum, 46, 59. 
Orioles, 71, 90, 144, 197. 
O-ven-hird, 135. 
Oto/, barn, 123. 

P. Panther, 179. 

Partridge-berry, 54. 
Pepper-buih, sweet, 141. 
P/iJe, 125. 

P/ne, tVeymouth, 30. 
Pinxter flower, 141. 
P;/./7o, 113. 
P/owr, 188. 
P/a»7, w(7i, 141. 
Pontederia, 155. 
Poplar, Lombardy, 30. 
Primrose, 155. 
Pjwf, 57, 61, 68. 

Q. ^a/7, 32, 200. 

R. iJflWrV, 44, 188, 196. 

Raccoon, 47, 187. 
Rail-bird, 199. 
Raven, 146. 
Red-eye, 19, 32. 
Redstart, 32. 
Reed-bird, 198. 



214 Index 

Reeds, 155. 
Relics, Indian, 43. 
Robin, 32, 47, 75, 146. 
Rose-mallow, 41. 
2{w«, 145. 

S. Sand-piper, 25, 38. 

Saponaria, 77. 
Sedge, 156. 
Shad-hush, 140. 
Snake, garter-, 27. 

•water-, 130, 179, 190. 
Snoiv-birds, 67. 
Sparrow, chipping, 32, 180. 
foxie, 207. 

««^-. 25. 3^> 76, 88, 135, 

swamp-, 41. 

tr^e-, 59, 82, 198. 

luhite-throated, 59, 198, 207. 
Sphagnum, 56, 57, 69. 
Spice-wood, 73, 1 40. 
Spiders, 37. 
Spirea, 1 41. 
Squirrel, flying-, 59. 
Sundeiv, 69. 
Sunfish, 129. 
Sunfloiuer, 41, 1 55. 
Sivalloiv, hank, 93 ; ^jrn, 94. 

X. Tanager, scarlet, 53, 144. 

Tea-herry, 52. 
Tea/, blue-winged, 190. 



Index 215 

Thorn f 'white, 141. 
Thrush, broivn, 32, 72, 82. 
Thrushes, 71, 144. 
Titmouse, 20, 67, 75. 
Trout, 127. 
Trumpet-creeper, 136. 
Tulip-tree, 43. 
Turkey-bu%%arJ, 32. 
Turtle, snapping-, 132, 179. 

V, Vireo, red-eyed, 32, 90; ivhite-eyed, 112. 

W. Warbler, spotted, 32, 51. 

tree-creeping, 87. 
Warblers, 51, 73, 205. 
Weasel, 156. 
Whippoor-will, 72. 
Winter-green, 62, 69. 
^iTo^, 179. 
Wood-robin, 18. 
^rsn, 31, 72, 142. 

Carolina, 79. 

marsh-, 41. 

■winter, 207. 



